This paper argues that, during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, universities have been captured by neo-liberal regimes of truth. We suggest that this may inhibit the 'research imagination' within universities and, consequently, their role in the democratisation of knowledge. We consider the role of capital in the globalisation of higher education, and the resulting global circulation of people and knowledge. We then examine how what we have termed the 'neo-liberal colonisation' of higher education has been achieved, ending with a discussion of the implication of these processes for the idea of the research imagination in universities.