VISION, MISSION & DIRECTIONS
At OCAS, our vision, mission and values are the foundation for our commitment to the colleges and our applicants. Find out more about what drives us.
Vision
For Ontario's public colleges to be a first choice for postsecondary education.
Mission
To support Ontario's public colleges becoming a first choice in postsecondary education through:
- A reliable applicant-centred information and application-to-college service.
- Marketing colleges and their programs in an integrated systems approach with Colleges Ontario and colleges.
- A College System Data Warehouse which is a trusted source of business intelligence.
Values
We value:
- Applicant-centered online and personal services available when they are needed.
- Consultation and open communication with customers and employees.
- Technological innovation to benefit customers.
- Respecting the applicant source of our revenue and using it responsibly.
- Forging partnerships that benefit our customers.
- Protecting the confidentiality of customer information.
- Interdepartmental cooperation.
- Personal and professional development.
- Balancing work and personal life.
- Community involvement.
- Environmental responsibility.
Ownership and Governance
OCAS Application Services Inc. is a non-profit corporation created by Ontario’s twenty-four publicly-funded Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology and Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning. The company is governed by a Board of Directors comprising four College Presidents, the President and CEO of Colleges Ontario, a College Vice-President and the CEO of OCAS.
The Board is advised by three Advisory Committees which correpond to the three sanctioned areas of activity included in the objects of incorporation:
- Applicant Services
- Marketing
- Data Warehouse
Major Clients and Markets
Our major clients and partners are:
- The more than three million visitors to ontariocolleges.ca each year, the hundreds of thousands of prospective applicants and their supporters who research a college education, and the 150,000 who actually apply.
- 1,100 Ontario High Schools and their counselors, and their Boards.
- 28 publicly-funded colleges (twenty-four Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, Institutes of Technology Advanced Learning, the three regional campuses of the University of Guelph, and The Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences).
- The Association of Colleges, Colleges Ontario .
- The Ontario and Federal Governments.
Value Proposition
OCAS provides an online gateway for college intenders and their supporters from Ontario and around the world to research and apply to 28 publicly-funded colleges (24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, 3 Agricultural Colleges, 1 Applied Health Sciences College). This enables:
- Applicants to research all colleges and their programs, apply, request transcripts and receive and accept college offers of admission online, 24 hours per day and 7 days per week.
- High schools to supply transcripts for college applicants electronically and to access information about their college applicants to support counselling.
- Colleges to expose their programs collectively online , to make it easy for applicants to find and compare programs across the college system, and learn about colleges and programs they might not otherwise have considered.
- Researchers in colleges, Colleges Ontario and government to access a college system data warehouse of enrolment lifecycle and enrolment planning information which exists in no other centralized source.
- Colleges Ontario to market and advocate for the college system at a higher level through an annual allocation of application revenue for this purpose.
