Published by the University of Toronto Press, Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization is a collection of essays and interviews that considers pedagogy in the context of higher learning. The University of Toronto's official motto is "velut arbor aevo" ("As a tree with the passage of time"), a snippet from a poem by Horace which suggests the image of a tree filling out and taking root. We are meant to draw an analogy between the tree and what? Knowledge? Or a maturing character? Maybe. But more recently it has called to mind the image of a growing economy.

This collection is premised on the supposition that in recent years our thinking about education has become increasingly instrumental. Certainly this has been the experience at the University of Toronto. At the end of the '80s it answered a looming financial crisis by recruiting to the president's office J. Robert S. Pritchard, who was then Dean of the Faculty of Law and well-connected to the business community. During his ten-year stint he directed a wildly successful billion dollar capital campaign. This included significant gifts that produced the latest jewel in the campus crown - the Rotman School of Management.

It is unclear whether the change in campus culture aims to meet the needs of business or is required to do so as a tacit condition of financial support. Nevertheless, as someone who has been lurking intermittently on the University of Toronto campus for 25 years, I can attest to the fact that the change is real. One need only look at the course evaluation questionnaires which are distributed at the end of each term. There is a striking shift to a more managerial style of human relations that depends on financial accountability. It is through standardized criteria that the university exacts its accountability.

For the student this means standardized curriculum and evaluation. For the professor this means standardized qualifications, compensation, research and publication expectations, and restriction of expertise to a clearly defined subject area. In this way accountability plays a role in constituting a higher education. It establishes what counts as knowledge and legitimizes the expert while marginalizing those who cannot or will not conform to its model.

This also has the incidental effect of playing neatly into the hands of the neoliberal global agenda. If one of the cornerstones of the new economy is mobility of labour, then globalization is well-served by a standardized education. It becomes important that a surgeon trained in Mumbai be competent to perform in a New York operating theatre and that an engineer from Los Angeles be able to design a bridge that meets Tokyo specifications and that a philosopher trained in... but what need has a global economy for philosophers?