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Ontario SMA2’s Basic Document Structure

SMA2 documents highlighted

After reading all of Ontario’s University SMAs it is clear that they all share the following basic structure, which has been indented to reflect the hierarchy suggested by interpreting the formatting of the MTCU web version, the institutionally hosted signed PDF versions, and the presences of numbering in the SMAs for Carleton, McMaster, OCADu, Trent, UOIT/OTU, Ryerson and Wilfred Laurier (but curiously, not the others).


Basic SMA2 Document Structure

1. Preamble

This is common text across all SMAs, this section describes that this is an agreement between the MTCU and the respective university.

2. Ontario’s Vision for Postsecondary Education

Common text across all SMAs.

3. The Universities’ Vision, Mission and Mandate

This is the first sub-section authored by the universities and the approach varies greatly. Some break out distinct sections for vision, mission and mandate, some just one or two. Some use a lot of space in this section, and derive their vision, mission or mandate from their founding legislation other seminal documents, such as Guelph, Ottawa, Western and Waterloo. Some cite their consistency, such as Ryerson’s 1994 mission statement, or that it is derived from another solely institutionally developed source that is mentioned or not. Some aspirational, some affirmational, some adequate.

4. Aspirations

After a common introduction, this is where each university describes their goals. These were often itemized and varied in length and frequently had distinct examples.

5. Shared Objectives and Priorities for Differentiation

6. Student Experience

In this section universities describe their objectives and priorities for their students’ experience, and occasionally what differentiates that experience from others.

7. Innovation in Teaching and Learning Excellence

In all agreements this section included a sub-section “Examples of institutional initiatives” and a sub-section “Metrics and targets” with common system-wide metrics, and institutional metrics.

8. Access and Equity

In almost all agreements this section included a sub-section “Examples of institutional initiatives” and a sub-section “Metrics and targets” with common system-wide metrics, and institutional metrics.

9. Research Excellence and Impact

In all agreements, this section included a sub-section “Examples of institutional initiatives” and a sub-section “Metrics and targets” with common system-wide metrics, and institutional metrics. The length of this section varied greatly, but I was left with a sense that there was clear differentiation in institutional approaches that also aligned with their mission and vision.

11. Enrolment Strategy and Program Direction

Each SMA has the statement that “This section establishes the agreed-upon corridor midpoint that will form the basis of enrollment-related funding over the course of the SMA period.”

12. Enrolment plan and corridor midpoints

The corridor calculations are “consistent with this level of enrolment and subject to the policies contained within the Ontario University Funding Model Technical Manual, May 2017, Version 1.0.” which is not provided by MTCU. The WGU corridor dictates the 75% of the institution’s basic grant during the periods (MTCU, 2015).

This section also contains the institution’s projected enrollments, as appropriate in various graduate and undergraduate levels, and projected international enrollment for each year in the period.

13. Strategic areas of program strength and expansion

This section included a ranked list of program areas of strength and program area of expansion. This will be an interesting array of data to compare across SMAs.

14. Financial Sustainability

This section contained key measures of intuitional sustainability, labelled as system-wide and most frequently contained these five metrics:

  1. Net Income / (Loss) Ratio
  2. Net Operating Revenues Ratio
  3. Primary Reserve Ratio
  4. Interest Burden Ratio
  5. Viability Ratio.

There are some inconsistencies in this area, such as Brock University’s SMA having the values for Primary Reserve Ratio (typically expressed as the number of days the institution could function using its expendable net assets) and Interest Burden Ratio (typically expressed as a percentage) are apparently swapped as well as the Net Operating Revenues Ratio value was left blank.

15. Institutional Collaborations and Partnerships

In most agreements, this section included a sub-section on “Examples of institutional initiatives”. Interpretations of collaborations and formatting varied greatly. In some agreements inter-university collaborations were mentioned in one collaborating university’s SMA, but not the others’.

15. Ministry/Government Commitments

This section was absent in some of the signed PDF versions such as OCADu’s, but present in Western University’s and others, this section itemizes the policy framework and further clarifications that these agreements are subject to.


System-Wide Metrics Do Not have System-Wide Measures

A significant number of system-wide metric targets were proposed in formats that made them difficult to measure consistently across the system, or without the institution’s involvement in providing references for measures relevant to peers or baselines, most institutions did provide targets that were immediately quantifiable. Targets set relative to private or internal baselines, or relative to regional or provincial averages were particularly challenging.  The following table depicts the first system-wide metric and is representative of the targets set for many other metrics.


List of section headings in Ontario Universities 2017-2020 SMAs

SMA2 Heading Report

The technical structure of each SMA is not exactly the same.

Comparison of Document Length

The SMAs were certainly differentiated by length: