This article contributes to the emerging theoretical construct of what has been called "transnational academic capitalism", characterised by the blurring of traditional boundaries between public, private, local, regional and international, and between market-driven and critically transformative higher education visions. Here we examine how these issues are reflected in higher education policy in the Arab Gulf, asking: what kinds of capital are being constructed and traded? By and for whom? What is the relationship between higher education competition, governance and the public good? We find contradictory trends, which we see as strategic ambivalence pointing to country-specific readings of similar regional markets and attempts to hedge bets between rival forms of apparent capital. The exploration offers a counterpoint to more widely cited examples, hereby helping to shape new paradigmatic "glocalised" understandings of this field.