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This paper examines how universities reconcile the need to project themselves as successful global competitors with the need to respond to national policy expectations, particularly around equality. It does so through a comparative analysis of the language used in the publicly available documents of universities in England and New Zealand. While a discourse of ‘distinctiveness’ is employed across the board by universities to denote superiority, there are differences in the extent to which differently ranked universities signify their preparedness fully to embrace economic priorities. The analysis reveals the sidelining of ‘equality’ and its replacement by a discourse of ‘diversity’ and ‘potential to succeed’ which is more compatible with elitism than with social justice. The language of ‘distinction’ and ‘diversity’, it is argued, supports a logic of accumulation - for both institutions and students - in which those who are already advantaged are likely to reap the greatest rewards from a competitive educational market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]