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Recent policy emphasis on market mechanisms to drive up the performance of education systems has resulted in rising fees and increased competition in higher education in England, and in the creation of different types of self-governing state-funded schools run independently of municipal authority in compulsory schooling. University sponsorship of Charter Schools in the US raises issues which this article examines in relation to university sponsorship of academies in England. The article provides a quantitative overview of university sponsorship of academies over the last decade and explores how the policy context has shaped the discursive construction of sponsorship by the institutions concerned. Different patterns of sponsorship linked to institutional position and differentiated discourses of 'sponsorship' consistent with 'academic entrepreneurship' are identified. The discursive function of sponsorship is argued to extend to a legitimation of the policy itself reflected in increasing government pressure on universities to sponsor academies.