A quarter century ago, Henry Steck branded corporatization the “most fashionable and ominous buzzword in contemporary academic circles.” Because this epithet “seems to say everything—or else very little,” it does more to frustrate than to facilitate critical inquiry. Specifically, this charge obscures the fact that most US universities are legally constituted as corporations. As is true of corporations generally, the academic corporation is a self-governing entity insofar as it possesses the authority to make rules that bind those subject to its jurisdiction and determine disposition of the assets it owns. The university’s incorporation within a financialized capitalist economy, however, subverts the academy’s capacity to exercise the powers that define all corporations and hence to rule its own affairs. Therefore, it is not the university’s corporatization but its effective disincorporation that saps the academy’s autonomy and so renders it subject to capture by hostile powers and subordination to purposes not its own.