The article offers a critical insight into conceptions and ideas guiding the process of reforming a Polish world of science, which was initiated in 2010. It concentrates not as much on a process understood as an institutional change, as on hopes and expectations underpinning the reforms, framing its inner logic. The article points to the decisive role of the influence which a dogmatist approach – rooted in a neoliberal doctrine imposing a narrow understanding of a social harmony as resulting from a successful operation of free market machinery – had on a whole undertaking, giving the reform its sense and meaning. It also brings to focus a conflict between an academic tradition exposing the symbolism of truth and the neoliberal system of values promoting notions of productivity and efficiency.