Producing "What the deans know": Cost accounting and the restructuring of post-secondary education

This article uses institutional ethnography to investigate how accounting t exts mediate the reshaping of managerial practice in the educational sector . The community college system in Ontario is currently undergoing an extens ive process of restructuring. Operating grants have been reduced; governmen t spending policies increasingly pull colleges into market relations. In th is context, college administrators are working to develop new ways of "doin g business." Integral to this are accounting procedures that play a powerfu l role in organizational restructuring by creating new patterns of organiza tional visibility. One such, program costing, calculates the profitability rate of an academic department's various program offerings. As deans, depar tment chairpersons, faculty and union representatives orient to this new vi sibility, the changes they introduce into their work routines bring market relevances into the local sites of college activity.