A major challenge facing higher education is balancing two competing discourses. One sees higher education as a place of learning and teaching in academic freedom, a place to enable staff and students to research and learn without restrictions, a place in which to be able to critique the status quo. The other discourse is rooted in neo-liberalism. This has imposed on institutions a regime of economic efficiency in a global marketplace, a regime that advocates cognitive capitalism and is kept in place by an accountability culture. This article first traces the influences of these discourses in Aotearoa New Zealand; second, it uses data from document analyses and fieldwork to make a judgement about which influence is dominant; and third, it uses this to preview the future of the two discourses using causal layered analysis (CLA), a method for analysing futures.