The following article focuses on the transformation of the universities, which is currently undergoing in Poland due to the market pressure and introducing the ethos of work and management originating in the ‘audit culture’. The authors exposes the consequences of employing the regime of constant evaluation procedures and attempts of embedding the market competition logic into the academic practices. The conclusions are based on partial analysis of the Polish debate on commercialization of the higher education, the author’s “participant observation’ in the academic milieu and on relevant experiences from the countries where the commercialization of higher education is much more developed. At the end, the author advocates for more thorough research on the local context, practices and meanings, which were produced at the Polish universities under the current reforms of the higher education.