Parker, L.D.2025-12-172025-12-172013Financial Accountability and Management, 2013; 29(1):1-250267-44241468-0408https://hdl.handle.net/1959.8/156734This paper examines the financially focused strategies now evident amongst institutions competing for space in the global higher education system.In their search for increasing financial self-sufficiency, universities and other higher education providers are examined for their primary competitive strategies. The study provides comprehensive evidence of their cost and operating efficiency strategies, facilitated by increasingly pervasive financial performance accountability systems. The primary operational strategies of teaching and research are found to have been transmogrified into strategies of customised education and research that is primarily focused upon and measured in terms of its funds generation. These trends contribute to complex performance management and accountability challenges as universities’ senior managers balance their internal financial ambitions with the expectations of external stakeholders, while simultaneously projecting sanitised imagery through corporate public relations strategies.enCopyright 2013 Blackwell Publishingfinancial managementefficiencyaccountabilityresearch fundingeducation massificationcustomised educationJournal article10.1111/faam.12000000210536200001