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Over the last fifteen years, many publications have analyzed the transformation of the universities in relation with the economy. In Europe, the Bologna convention and the creation of a common Licence–Master– Doctorate (LMD) curriculum for European universities have been much discussed. In the USA as in Canada, critical voices have denounced the subordination of higher education to “marketâ€? forces (in particular at the doctoral level) and warned against the declining autonomy of fundamental or “disinterestedâ€? research. The aim of this paper is to show that the various positions taken on the issue of higher education reform are implicitly based on a confusion between the logic of the scientific field and that of the academic field. The recent attempts to transform graduate programs as well as the career counseling of graduate students bear witness to the increasing autonomy of the academic field from the scientific field. The former monopoly of the latter over the definition of the legitimate graduate and post-graduate curricula is thus disappearing.