Many universities in developing economies were established as public universities to provide training for manpower requirements of the developing state. In the recent past there has been a shift in emphasis of preferred economic drivers towards practices common to knowledge based economies in developing countries. This move has compelled Higher Education (HE) institutions to pursue programmes which are aligned to the notion of commodification of knowledge. Although within this emerging environment public funded universities are not expected to be profit making, they have to function or operate in a manner that demonstrates entrepreneurship by engaging in third stream income generation without compromising their social responsibility even as they remain entrepreneurial to raise third stream revenue. To what extent is this possible and is it necessary? This paper identifies and discusses the parameters that would influence and direct state funded university operations towards attaining the phenomenon of commodification of knowledge. It uses the University of Botswana's context to guide discussion.