This article analyzes the way in which management has stifled critical economic knowledge at the university. Based upon the case-study of an economics department, it shows that the intensification of the competition between different curricula in economics and the ensuing reorientation of student influx are the root causes of a structural decline of the institution, which professors have interpreted as a crisis of the capacity of critical economics to attract students. Combined with the reshuffling of the faculty (associated with different ways of generating generations), these transformations explain several conversions to “management.” They also explain why the opinions economists express about their professional practices are not necessarily aligned with their scientific and political positions.