The rise of the managerialist university, in terms of a shift towards supposed corporate forms of governance in universities, associated also with greater competition between universities, has been the subject of considerable controversy. Dissent with respect to these developments has commonly appealed to the notion of the university as a special kind of corporate entity that at least partly transcends merely economic considerations. This paper demonstrates that a purely economic analysis of the university provides a sufficient basis for repudiating the managerialist model.