Recent academic strikes in Tartu and Tallinn show that staff in Estonian universities have the determination to fight for a long overdue increase in funding. The strikes at Estonia’s two centres of higher education and research were a direct response to a state budget announcement in which the higher education sector was once again sidelined.

This kind of display of collective unity is remarkable in the highly individualistic Estonian academy. Given that grassroots mobilisation has not previously influenced higher education policy-making, these warning strikes - combined with other activities in the last 12 months - are a turning point. Academic staff and students have emerged as a force to be taken seriously and trade unions have risen to the challenge of contesting continuing austerity. Amid a crisis caused by years of underfunding, there is once again hope for renewal and institutional justice.

Estonia is home to six public universities and one private university, which have endured a decade of neglect following the 2008 economic crisis. For much of this period, the issue of underfunding has received little attention. Successive government coalitions led by the pro-austerity Reform Party had no place in their agenda for investing in institutions of higher learning or increasing public funding available for research. While economic growth resumed in 2010, public sector investments have remained scarce.

Kadri Aavik, an Estonian sociologist, argues that the underfunding of science and higher education in Estonia stems from a paradigm of neoliberal governance that continues to be influential in higher education policy. For Aavik, this paradigm focuses on the self-sufficiency of individuals and institutions. Scientists and universities need to be proactive in finding research funding, and the failure to succeed implies that they might not deserve it. Short-term and project-based funding is the order of the day – and obtaining it requires a strenuous effort at the cost of academic freedom.