The Planning and Budget Office provides oversight of the University’s operating budget and enrolment planning processes, and provides leadership and coordination for the University’s institutional research and data governance functions. The office maintains detailed models providing multi-year projections of enrolments, revenues and costs, and supports the Vice-President and Provost in setting the University’s budget.
As part of its mandate, the Planning and Budget Office is committed to support academic and administrative divisions in all aspects of planning and management related to enrolments, tuition fees, operating budgets, and provides advice on the financial implications of broad ranging issues such as interdivisional teaching, student aid, graduate student funding, capital planning, new program proposals, tuition fees, Strategic Mandate Agreements, and many other related issues.
Operating Budget
Budget plans are shaped by the University of Toronto’s academic priorities as articulated in the President’s Three Priorities, the Towards 2030 academic plan, the Provost’s five priorities, and other documents. The President’s three priorities – internationalization, engagement with the city-region, and re-imagining the undergraduate experience – have been the focus of activities such as increased support for international experience and study abroad, investments in experiential learning, and the work of an expert panel on undergraduate student educational experience. Other major priorities include supporting student success and well-being through investments in mental health services; curricular and co-curricular programming that helps students become graduates who will make significant impacts on their communities and the world; and cross-disciplinary research that addresses local and global challenges in areas such as personalized medicine, the impact of new technologies on society, and data sciences. All of these priorities provide institutional context for divisional academic planning, which in turn leads to investment in specific initiatives and activities throughout the University.
The budget is the culmination of many months of planning and the decisions of many academic and administrative units. Through the annual budget planning process, academic divisions participate in detailed review of revenues and expenses and make decisions locally. Decisions are rolled up for review and approval, informed by relevant economic factors, risk assessments, collective agreements, provincial and University policies, and then approved by administration and governance.
Tuition fees at the University are determined in accordance with the University’s Tuition Fee Policy, the Statement of Commitment Regarding International Students, and the Provincial Government’s Domestic Tuition Framework. The current Domestic Tuition Framework extends the freeze on Ontario resident domestic tuition fees for undergraduate and most graduate programs – in place since the 10% cut in 2019-20 – through to 2026-27. It also continues a multi-year policy introduced in 2023-24 that permits anomaly adjustments for tuition fees that are significantly below the sector average of comparable programs – for the University of Toronto, this applies to most MA and MSc research stream masters programs and the MSc in Applied Computing. Consistent with the previous frameworks, the Government’s current policy allows for differentiated fees for out of province domestic students. In 2024-25, fees for non-Ontario resident undergraduate students will increase by 5%.
Tuition fees for self-funded programs that do not receive operating grant support from the Ontario government and tuition fees for most international students are not subject to the provincial fee regulations.
The major principle underlying the University’s tuition fee policy is that public funding should be supplemented to offer students an educational experience of a quality that ranks with that of the finest public research universities in the world. In presenting the annual tuition schedules, the University reaffirms its commitment to maintaining student aid and its accessibility statement for domestic students that no student offered admission to a program at the University of Toronto should be unable to enter or complete the program due to lack of financial means.
The official tuition fee schedules are those approved annually by the Governing Council and listed in the University’s annual Tuition Fee Report. A Tuition Fee Lookup Tool is provided as an informational service for students and potential applicants. While we have made every attempt to ensure that this Tool completely and accurately reflects the approved fees, in the event of any discrepancy, the fee schedules posted in the Governing Council meeting materials will prevail.
Please note that these schedules provide tuition fees only and do not include other ancillary and incidental fees that may be applicable to programs. For complete information regarding tuition and other incidental fees, please visit Student Accounts.
Ancillary fees are fees charged to pay for services, materials, and activities that are not supported by operating grants, capital grants, or tuition fees. The Ministry of Colleges and Universities’ Guidelines state that compulsory ancillary fees are to be non-tuition related and should not be charged for items and services that support general costs of program delivery, with certain exceptions as permitted by the Guidelines.
The University of Toronto introduced a Policy on Ancillary Fees in 1995, which translates the Ancillary Fee Guidelines provided by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities into the University of Toronto context.
The University’s Policy on Ancillary Fees makes provision for a Category 5: University Schedule of Cost Recovery Fees and a Category 6: University Schedule of User Fees and Fines.
Under the policy, Category 5 and 6 ancillary fees shown on the schedule may be adjusted annually by administrative authority of the Vice President, Operations & Real Estate Partnerships, provided that the adjustments relate to changes in the cost of the materials or services provided. These changes are to be reported annually to the Business Board for information. The introduction or removal of a Category 6 fee or fine must be submitted to the Business Board for review and approval each spring.
The University also publishes a schedule of fees charged to individuals who are not enrolled as University of Toronto students, such as application and admission deferral fees for applicants, or licensing and degree verification fees for alumni. These fees are not subject to the Ministry guidelines or the University’s Policy described above. These fees are annually reported for information.
As part of its mandate, the Planning and Budget Office is committed to providing support to academic and administrative divisions in all aspects of planning and management related to enrolments, tuition fees and budgets. This SharePoint site has been developed to provide internal stakeholders access to information and planning tools.
If you are an internal stakeholder looking for access to the Planning & Budget SharePoint site, please click on the button below. Please note that this site is restricted and permissions are limited to members of the internal stakeholder group that deal directly with the planning and management of enrolments, tuition fees and budgets.
The Institutional Research and Data Governance (IRDG) Office sits within Planning and Budget office. IRDG is responsible for:
Reporting and analytics services within our distributed institutional research model including:
Leading institution-wide analysis projects.
Providing training opportunities for divisional analysts.
Implementing new analytics tools and platforms.
Improving access to curated institutional data assets.
Implementation of an institution-wide Data Governance program to support the University in strategically harnessing data to achieve institutional goals.
External reporting of institutional data (SMA metrics, key performance indicators for governance, international rankings, data exchanges with peer institutions.
