Budget Relationships

The final recommendations of the Budget Relationships pillar are available online.

Background

The Tri-Campus Budget Relationships Working Group considered issues related to the funding of tri-campus graduate units, the financial framework for tri-campus inter-divisional undergraduate teaching, accounting for University-wide and campus administrative costs, allocation of the indirect costs of research, and the annual budget review process. The work of the Tri-Campus Budget Relationships Working Group was also a part of the University’s Tri-Campus Review.

Chaired by Scott Mabury, Vice-President, Operations and Real Estate Partnerships & Vice-Provost, Academic Operations, the Tri-Campus Budget Relationships Working Group was also a as part of the University’s Budget Model Review and considered questions such as:

  • Accounting for University-wide and campus-wide costs
  • Issues related to the funding of tri-campus graduate units, such as student revenues, graduate student funding packages, the allocation of faculty office space, faculty supervision and workload, and program expenses
  • Issues related to tri-campus inter-divisional teaching
  • Research funding and indirect costs of research
  • The annual planning and budget review processes

The Budget Relationships working group was a pillar of both the Tri-Campus Review and the Budget Model Review. Its mandate was to discuss questions related to budget, costs, and planning across the three campuses. The group provided additional understanding of the revenue and expenses associated with tri-campus graduate programs, and recommended that each administrative service have a clearly articulated service models to identify the division of responsibility between tri-campus shared service units, academic divisions, and campuses.

The working group made a series of recommendations to the Administration, including:

  • Implement a tri-campus framework for inter-divisional teaching.
  • Develop a new shared service cost review structure, including the consideration of Service Level Agreements that articulate the division of responsibility between shared service units, academic divisions, and campuses.
  • Promote transparency of graduate program revenues and expenses, and dispel misconceptions about how much it costs to deliver graduate education, who pays and who benefits from these costs, and how the costs are covered.
  • Adjust capital project management fees for UTM and UTSC to acknowledge the responsibility for management of some capital projects at those campuses.
  • Clarify the role of the annual Academic Budget Review (ABR) meetings for UTM and UTSC, specifically with regard to the difference between academic budgets and campus budgets, and the process by which UTM and UTSC might submit non-academic items to the budget process.
  • Revise the governance pathway for the University’s annual budget to encourage more local administrative processes of budget development at UTM and UTSC.  

Members

The Budget Relationships pillar included the following members:

  • Scott Mabury, Vice-President, Operations and Real Estate Partnerships & Vice-Provost, Academic Operations (Chair)
  • Andrew Arifuzzaman, Chief Administrative Officer, University of Toronto Scarborough
  • Judith Chadwick, Assistant Vice-President, Research Services
  • Brian Coates, Chief Financial Officer, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
  • Nancy Edwards, Chief Financial Officer, Faculty of Medicine
  • Mary Lyne, Chief Administrative Officer, Rotman School of Management
  • Kim McLean, Chief Administrative Officer, Faculty of Arts & Science
  • Trevor Rodgers, Assistant Vice-President, Planning & Budget
  • Susan Senese, Interim Chief Administrative Officer, University of Toronto Mississauga

Final Recommendations of the Budget Relationships Pillar (September 2019)
Terms of Reference — Budget Relationships Working Group (July 2018)