The UBC Budget represents the financial plan for the university — it serves as a roadmap for allocating the university’s revenues against anticipated expenses.
The budget process is a collaboration between the university’s Provosts’ teams, who lead the alignment of the budget to UBC’s academic strategy, with central finance and the distributed faculty and administrative unit finance teams.
The model used at UBC is decentralized, meaning that faculties and administrative units are responsible for balancing budgets within their respective portfolios. It uses the prior year’s allocations as a baseline to identify recurring funding and considers enhancement requests and the distribution of incremental revenues to fund strategic initiatives and to manage cost pressures.
The primary aim of UBC’s annual budget process is to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the university and that limited financial resources are targeted towards academic priorities, as articulated in the President’s priorities and Shaping UBC’s Next Century, UBC’s strategic plan.
The budget is informed by relevant economic and political factors, risk assessments, assumptions, and the Government of BC’s mandate for UBC.
Creating the 2023/24 Budget
The development of UBC’s budget is a collaborative effort including all the university’s faculties and administrative units, with consultation and discussion at the core of the process.
This year UBC’s finance teams have collaborated with:
- Faculty and administrative unit leadership, through individual strategic budget meetings as well as financial forecast/outlook sessions
- Deans
- Academic heads/directors of units
- Associate vice-presidents and senior staff
- Indigenous Strategic Plan Executive Advisory Committee (ISPEAC) and President’s Advisory Committee on Indigenous Affairs
- Equity-deserving groups
- Elected student leadership
- Senate Budget Sub-Committees of the Budget Committee of the Council of Senates (Vancouver and Okanagan) Executive
These processes ensure that financial planning across the university is aligned with UBC’s strategic priorities and encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing across all academic and administrative groups. While budgets for the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses are determined separately, they are combined in the annual Budget Report before being presented to the Board of Governors for consideration.
UBC’s budget for 2023/24 was approved by UBC’s Board of Governors and covers the fiscal year from April 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024.