College and university Strategic Mandate Agreements
Learn about the funding agreements between Ontario and colleges and universities that are publicly-assisted.
Overview
Strategic Mandate Agreements are a key component of our accountability framework for the postsecondary education system.
They are agreements that each publicly-assisted college and university has with the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. They include the:
- government’s accountability and transparency objectives
- school’s priorities
The previous agreements ran from 2014–2017 and 2017–2020.
Changes to 2020–2025 agreements
Until 2020–2021, most of the operating funding has been based on enrolment, with only a small portion of funding tied to performance (1.4% for universities and 1.2% for colleges).
The new agreements for 2020–2025 introduce a new ‘made-in-Ontario’ performance-based funding model. Funding will be more focused on student and economic outcomes. This means more college and university operating funding will be tied to performance against targets.
This new funding model:
- ensures students and graduates are set up to succeed in rewarding careers
- encourages institutions to be more efficient, specialized and focused on what they do best
- promotes greater accountability and transparency by ensuring that the funding postsecondary institutions receive results in positive economic outcomes
Responding to COVID-19
To provide stability and predictability to Ontario’s publicly assisted colleges and universities, the government decided to delay the activation of performance-based funding for 3 years (2020–2021, 2021–2022 and 2022–2023).
Institutions continued to measure and report annual outcomes as initially planned pre-pandemic, gathering valuable data to inform decision-making, and help drive future improvements in the postsecondary sector.
Performance-based funding will be activated at the system-wide proportion of 10% in Year 4 (2023–2024) and 25% in Year 5 (2024–2025).
Performance metrics
Ten metrics, aligned with government priorities, were phased in over a three-year period starting in 2020–2021.
The metrics reflect institutions’ individual strengths and distinct mandates, as well as the role institutions play in their local communities and economies.
The metrics include:
Skills and job outcomes
- Graduate employment earnings
- Experiential learning
- Skills and competencies
- Graduate employment rate in a related field
- Institutional strength/focus
- Graduation rate
Economic and community impact
- Research funding and capacity for universities, and apprenticeship-related for colleges
- Research funding from industry sources/funding from industry sources
- Community/local impact of student population
- Economic impact (institution-specific)
Productivity, accountability and transparency
Through further engagement with the sector on metric refinement, a decision was made to remove this reporting and data collection requirement for institutions for the duration of the SMA3 period, to reduce reporting burden and duplication with other government initiatives.
Read the agreements
Read the Strategic Mandate Agreements between Ontario and the colleges and universities that are publicly-assisted.