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At the University of Ottawa, the faculty just voted overwhelmingly to go on strike if progress at the negotiating table on key issues remains stalled. This is not an isolated action.

Across Canada and the United States, university faculty are sounding the alarm, not just over wages and working conditions, but over a deeper and more troubling trend: the gradual departure from the core mission of higher education. When universities prioritize financial interests over educational ideals, when pursuits of teaching, research and democratic governance are undermined by market-driven agendas, strikes and protests serve as a tool in efforts to push for change.

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The University of Ottawa, like so many other institutions, is caught in a shift that mirrors the broader course of higher education in the neoliberal age. Faculty are striking not only to protect their salaries, but to protect the very essence of education. Universities, places of intellectual inquiry, creativity and the free exchange of ideas, are increasingly shaped in the image of business. Financial interests and subservience to market ideologies (think efficiency, accountability, exploding administrations, increasing class sizes and diminishing degrees of professors) are reshaping institutions that should instead be devoted to ideals of the public good.

Universities are increasingly functioning as companies rather than centers of knowledge. We are witnessing a shift from higher education to education for hire.

It’s not hard to see why this change is happening. Reduced public funding for higher education and the increasing influence of neoliberal ideologies have created a perfect storm. Resource-strapped universities have become increasingly dependent on market-driven strategies: tuition increases, corporate sponsorship, reliance on international students, and commercialization of research. Administrators, once accountable to the academic community, are now often more responsive to markets, donors, and governments that prioritize financial returns over the cultivation of critical thinking or social responsibility.

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This business model has profound implications. When universities are seen primarily as job training institutions, as tools for producing a skilled workforce to feed the economy, they lose sight of their wider democratic mission. The cultivation of an educated citizenry—one capable of critical thinking, engaged citizenship, and ethical leadership—is sacrificed at the altar of market goals. When education becomes merely a product to be consumed, the transformative potential of teaching and research diminishes.

Equally troubling is the erosion of the collegial, democratic governance model that has traditionally distinguished universities from corporations. The faculty once shared power with the administration, shaping policy through collaboration and debate. But as the corporate model takes hold, universities are increasingly run by top-down hierarchical management teams. Decisions are made behind closed doors by executives whose interests are aligned with the bottom line, not the academic community.

So why strike? Strikes are a last resort, but they are an important tool in the effort to push universities to return to their core mission: to provide a high-quality education, to engage in research that serves the public good, and to be models of collective governance that resist market ideologies.

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Can universities fight back against these worrying societal trends? The answer is yes—but only if faculty, students, and administrators are willing to reclaim higher education as a public good rather than a private good. This requires a radical reconsideration of how universities are financed, governed and operated.

In a random fit, radical rethinking is what universities should be good at. Universities can be an essential part of efforts to educate the public and policymakers, to change the conversation, to ensure that a university education remains an opportunity for intellectual, personal and democratic growth, not just a path to a paycheck.

Professors can harness the power of a strike to advance this agenda. But university administrations can also join the fight, understanding that the health of our institutions depends not on emulating corporations, but on affirming the values ​​that have long made universities engines of progress in democratic societies.

A strike is not an end, but a beginning: a chance to revive the debate about what universities are and what they should be.

Joel Westheimer is Professor of Democracy and Education, University of Ottawa.

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