The authors of Counting Out the Scholars achieve their key objectives with a text that is both informative and provocative. Written in an accessible style, the book still manages to be academic enough to provide a convincing argument on the topic of performance indicators in post-secondary education in Canada.

The authors oppose the continuing trend toward more accountability and efficiency on ideological and intellectual grounds. They are particularly concerned for the humanities, fine arts and social sciences in Canadian universities.

While states and institutions have a long history of collecting quantitative data on inputs and outputs, the current situation is dramatically different. Since the 1960s, post-secondary education systems, and particularly universities, have become central legitimating institutions in the modern state formation.

The combination of 'new right' ideology, the consequent reduction in funding and the recognition that knowledge is the key commodity, means that for the first time in history universities have come to be defined as sites of capital accumulation.

In this context, we see the rise of performance regimes as states attempt to harness universities to the tasks of economic production while at the same time legitimate their actions to the general public through increased accountability.

The parts of the book that work best are the historical content of part one and the case studies in part three. The reader is taken through five phases in the history of accountability and efficiency. Along the way attention is given to quality and excellence as ideological levers used in the language of justification for PI regimes.

Phase one (1850 to the First World War) traces the origins of these regimes as we see an emerging pattern of moderately detailed public reporting. Phase two (inter-war years) highlights the rise of the cult of efficiency and scientific management. In both these periods, universities are seen as somewhat exempt from these accounting activities.

The explanation most likely inheres in their elite status and separation from the concerns of the general public. Universities were - at least in theory - separate from the world and had the right to be irrelevant.

Phase three overlaps with the time periods of the first two phases, as the authors bring together the rise of the behavioral sciences and testing, the expansion of automation, electronics and increased control of industrial production, and most important, the links to accountancy as a way of seeing and defining the world.

Phase four (1950s-1980s) is marked by the acceptance by university administrators that their institutions needed to be managed like a business. Phase five takes us up to the present when PI regimes have become an accepted part of the university landscape.

In part three, by far the best chapter is the U.K. case study where the authors provide an analytic chronology of events from the late 1980s through the 1990s. This is a fascinating narrative and probably the best example to what Kogan has called the "evaluative state." The Thatcher evolution had a massive impact on universities in the U.K. New right policies have, since the late 1970s, transformed the U.K. system into a quasi-market where everyone is expected to do more with less funding.

The story begins with the redefinition of tenure and ends with a revolt led by the London School of Economics against the accounting exercises. We learn that the research assessment exercises (RAE) have exacerbated the trend toward concentrating research funding in a few institutions, namely Oxbridge and London (specifically, Imperial, University College and King's).

This in turn reinforces the historic stratification in the post-secondary system. Further, as vitae and people become commodities to be traded in this quasi-market, we see evidence of game playing and the favoring of short-term publication rather than long-term fundamental research.

By the late 1990s, quality assurance and audits had become the key concepts in the litany of government accountability. The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) was given the task of subject assessment in the universities. The best example of the spreading audit culture was the decision to require some academics to maintain 24-hour diaries of their activities. The ultimate in what Foucault would see as the control of the subject.

In March 2001, the London School of Economics left the assessment system. The LSE Academic Board stated, "the QAA had infringed academic freedom, imposed its own bureaucratic and pedagogic agenda, neglected student intellectual development, and used incompetent and unprofessional reviewers."

The benchmarking decision was labeled "an insult which would exacerbate problems and increase emphasis on bureaucratic models favored by the agency." (pp. 109-110) LSE was joined by University College (London), Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Birmingham.

In the case of New Zealand, the authors describe how that society has been transformed over the last 15 years by the most extensive application of neo-conservative policies by government anywhere in the English-speaking world. The authors trace the story for post-secondary education from the Performance Indicators Task Force in the late 1980s through to the current uncertainty about the future of PI regimes. The story is much the same as in the U.K. as the forces of opposition have become much more vocal.

The authors are convincing when they argue that PI regimes in the U.K. and New Zealand have been instrumental in changing academic culture as distrust and resentment have replaced the collegial truce that existed before. In turn these regimes result in a massive increase in what the authors call "accounting bureaucracy." Managers, academics and auditors all spend countless hours preparing for and conducting the evaluations. Agencies are layered one on top of another to run the regimes. The most critical indirect costs are those associated with the loss of time available for academic rather than auditing work.

The least satisfactory parts of the book are chapters five through seven. The treatment of the U.S. and Canada is partial and uneven. We do learn that excellence and performance funding have driven the policymaking process in the U.S. Two main trends are noted: the creation of a range of PIs that state institutions must meet; and, the requirement that undergraduate learning be tested so the results can be used to evaluate the quality of the programs.

The authors note that performance funding is gradually being transformed into performance budgeting. Further, the use of PIs pushes universities toward homogeneity. The section on the dual system of accreditation is most useful. The authors point out that these systems are more developed in the U.S. than anywhere else and that they serve as guarantees of quality and service.

Finally, the authors conclude, "U.S. experience with performance funding suggests accountability and transparency are likely to succeed if they begin with some conviction at a local level. Universities and colleges must continue to make their case to state governments by indicating more clearly, to both politicians and the public, the merits of their spending decisions." (pp.153-154)

The lack of detailed analysis is particularly disappointing when we come to Canada as the reader expects and wants much more. The authors survey changes in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

We learn that in Alberta and Ontario the introduction of PIs was accompanied by budget cuts and intensified centralized control. The two most important signs of change are the creation in 2000-2001 of Ontario's Post-Secondary Education Quality Assurance Agency, and Quebec's contracts of performance.

According to the authors, "PIs are not friendly to differences in post-secondary education, nor do they respect the historic balancing act in Canadian post-secondary education. They encourage managerialism and discourage participatory, open-minded governance. It is so much easier to consult a table of statistics than to debate matters of educational importance in senates and in public." (p. 178)

In the final chapter, the authors reach toward a new accountability and this section moves away from academic analysis in the direction of political persuasion. The authors recommend local programs of action guided by "practical understandings" of the three leading concepts: "openness, accountability and quality in a system of mass higher education." (p. 223)

What follows is a series of recommendations directed to governments, universities and colleges. The authors provide a blueprint for what they label the "counter-revolution."

In the end I wanted more sociological analysis of the structural trends that underlie the PI narrative. A key part of the story must be the development since the 1960s of closer links between the economy and universities. Just as human capital theory was used to justify a social imperative in the 1960s, so we see in the 1980s the same language of justification in human resource theory for an economic imperative.

Through this same period and mainly as a result of massive increases in research funds from the federal government, we see the rise of the 'research university' in Canada. The social and economic imperatives that underpin government policy lay the foundation for the emergence in most OECD countries of mass or universal post-secondary education systems.

The need for more accountability is a response to the size and cost of the system. Just as mass school systems had to demonstrate their utility in earlier decades so it is with post-secondary systems today. In addition, more accountability provides government with the opportunity to demonstrate how well universities are serving the economic goals they have set.

Another part of the story that deserves more attention and perhaps another book is the seeming universality of PI regimes regardless of the political ideologies of sitting governments. As well, we need more comparative analysis across post-secondary systems (public and mixed public/private) of the relation between economic trends, political ideology and the emergence of PI regimes.

Finally, the authors touch upon what is the most fascinating tension in the PI story. True accountability we are told depends on governments granting autonomy to academics and universities. The implication here is that the most efficient form of accountability is one in which we become self-regulating.

The story and the recommendations should be taken seriously by governments and universities and colleges. After reading the text one is forced to agree that PI regimes were never about quality. "They were and are about cuts and control." (p. 69) Finally, we are left with an optimistic feeling as we follow the events in the U.K. and New Zealand.

Donald Fisher is with the Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and Training at the University of British Columbia.

To order Counting Out the Scholars contact Formac Distributing, fax: 902-425-0166; phone toll-free 1-800-565-1975.