Abstract & Overview
To date, there has yet to be a comprehensive national study of university corporatization in Canada.This study addresses this gap by reviewing the empirical basis, history, root causes and evolution of the transformation of higher education in Canada that has taken place over the past four decades.In this research, "corporatization" is used to refer to the process and resulting outcomes of the ascendance of business interests, values and models in the university system.Throughout the study, my two primary questions of interest are: (i) how has the corporatization of Canadian universities taken shape?; and(ii) what are the consequences of this restructuring both for higher education and society at large?The study begins with a brief historical review of the relationship between education and various sources of power, as well as some of the competing perspectives that have been used to explain university restructuring.I then review the main manifestations of the corporatization process, beginning with a detailed analysis of the casualization of academic labour.Drawing on a new and unique dataset collected through access to information requests, I provide a detailed account of the rise in the number of part-time and full-time contractually limited appointments in a number of Ontario