Description: The ascendancy of neoliberalism and the associated discourses of 'new public management', during the 1980s and 1990s, has produced a fundamental shift in the way universities and other institutions of higher education have defined and justified their institutional existence. The traditional professional culture of open intellectual enquiry and debate has been replaced with a market-institutional stress on performativity, as evidenced by the emergence of an emphasis on measured outputs: on strategic planning, performance indicators, quality assurance measures, and academic audits. This paper utilises the work of Michel Foucault, and specifically his lectures on neoliberal governmentality given at the College de France in 1979/80 in order to cast new light on variations within neoliberal theories. Specifically it will extend Foucault's assessment of the Ordoliberalen, and Human Capital theory, in order to ascertain the core features of neoliberalism as a mode of governance.Keywords: Foucault, governmentality, neoliberalism, new public management, higher education.