Lorenz analyzes how neoliberal ideology conceives of the public sector in general and, in particular, how this translates to an economic higher education sector. His first thesis is that neoliberal policies in the public sector--known as New Public Management (NPM)--are characterized by a combination of free market rhetoric and intensive managerial control practices that will explain the most important characteristics of NPM organizations. Second, is that NPM policies employ a discourse that parasitizes the everyday meanings of their concepts--efficiency, accountability, transparency, and quality--and simultaneously perverts all their original meanings. Third, is that the economic NPM definition of education ignores the most important aspects of the education process and therefore poses a fundamental threat to education itself. And fourth, is that the NPM discourse can be termed a junk discourse, in the sense ascribed to this concept by Harry G Frankfurt, that can explain the hermetic, self-referential nature of the NPM discourse and the fact that NPM ideology has proved to be completely resistant to all criticism for over thirty years.