The first time I had to pay university tuition for one of my kids, I had a hard time paying. Their student portal said that no money was owed, even though their classes were set. Emails to the registrar and payment departments were unanswered. I had to search the website for over an hour to find the link to pay…only to find they wanted you to use a third-party payment platform. It was exceptionally hard to give them money. Think about that in business terms for a second: if your customers had to navigate a four-department maze just to complete a purchase, you wouldn’t have customers for long.
Universities have never had to think about that. In Canada, propped up by government funding and the expectation of attendance, most institutions have operated for decades without the basic discipline that any small business has to develop just to survive. And now that the economic model is shifting, the cracks are impossible to ignore.
The Numbers Are Staggering
Fourteen Ontario universities are currently running combined deficits exceeding $400 million. The University of Waterloo has a $75 million structural shortfall. Queen’s is carrying $48 million in deficit. Carleton projected $32 million for this year. The University of Windsor faces $30 million after international enrollment dropped 25 percent almost overnight. Mohawk College is projecting a $50 million deficit for next year.
And then there’s Laurentian University — which actually went bankrupt. Not metaphorically. Legally bankrupt. Faculty were laid off. Programs were eliminated. Students in the middle of degrees lost them.
Here’s how it happened at the sector level: when the Ontario government froze domestic tuition in 2019, universities needed new revenue. They turned to international students, who paid three times more than domestic students — the highest international tuition in Canada, $10,000 more per year than the next most expensive province. For a while, it worked.
Then the federal government cut international student visas by 35 percent in 2024, then another 10 percent. Ontario universities are now projecting $900 million in losses over two years.
No small business builds its entire model around a single revenue source it can’t control. That’s not a strategy. That’s wishful thinking.
The Curriculum Gap
The financial crisis is visible. The curriculum problem is quieter — but it may do more long-term damage.
Most universities are still teaching students how to navigate an economy that no longer exists. The model of “show up, do the work, get paid, retire with a pension” is gone from every sector except academia itself. But that’s the invisible assumption baked into how most programs are designed and delivered.
What students actually need to navigate today’s economy: how to work in the gig economy, how to use social media as a professional tool, and — most urgently — how to use AI. Not just that AI exists. How to actually use it. How to prompt, integrate, verify, and think alongside it.
If a university is not actively teaching AI skills right now, that student is graduating behind the curve before they even start. Employers are already measuring competence in these tools. A degree that doesn’t include them isn’t preparing students for the real world — it’s disadvantaging them in it.
The Social Experience That Isn’t
Universities have marketed themselves for decades on the “campus experience” — the friendships, the community, the clubs, the personal growth. That pitch made sense in 1985. It’s increasingly difficult to justify today.
Organized social life at most universities peaks during orientation week and then largely dissolves. Most students are commuting, working, and financially stretched. Their actual social experience is primarily online — the same as everyone else’s.
Group work gets held up as a proxy for collaboration and teamwork. But there’s a difference between being assigned to a group and being taught how to work in one. Most students are just assigned. The result: one person carries the project, someone misses deadlines, there’s unresolved conflict, and everyone gets the same grade. They graduate with the experience of having been in groups, but not with the skills to lead or contribute effectively to one.
The Biggest Failure: Teaching People to Think
The most common defense of university is that it teaches you how to think, not what to think. Theory is timeless. Skills are ephemeral.
That argument has merit — but only if universities are actually delivering on it. And most aren’t.
Teaching people to think requires logic, reason, and evidence-based argument. It requires self-management — how to run your own day, manage your priorities, and lead your own development. It requires entrepreneurial thinking. Public speaking. The ability to articulate your value and advocate for yourself.
These things are rarely taught systematically. They show up in scattered electives, or not at all — because academia has developed a hierarchy where “applied” skills are considered beneath the institution.
And yet some of those same institutions are offering elective credit for courses on analyzing reality TV, studying hipster culture, or the history of maple syrup. That’s not a knock on curiosity. It’s a question of priorities. If a university won’t teach entrepreneurship and public speaking because they’re “too practical,” it doesn’t get to claim the moral high ground of intellectual rigor while offering credit for Arguing With Judge Judy.
What Universities Are Actually Selling
Here’s the bottom line question every university should be forced to answer honestly: what are you selling?
It’s not the credential. Most employers now treat a bachelor’s degree as roughly equivalent to relevant online courses combined with actual experience. The diploma is not the differentiator it once was.
It’s not the social experience, for reasons we’ve covered.
It’s not financial value, not when students are graduating with $80,000 in debt for outcomes that may not justify it.
So what is it? Is it how to think? How to navigate complexity? How to work with other people?
If any of those is the real answer — then most universities should be required to put themselves through their own program. Because right now, they are not thinking clearly about their own business model, they are not prepared for the real world, and they are struggling to work with the people their entire system depends on.
The tools for fixing this exist. Honest fiscal management. Curriculum that reflects the current economy. Transparent positioning about what the experience actually delivers. And a genuine commitment to teaching students the skills — practical and philosophical — they’ll actually need.
Universities can remain relevant. But they have to choose to change. And right now, most of them haven’t.
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