The private sector is amazing, isn't it? It's easily the best sector. Apart from the voluntary sector, of course, which is inspiring and humbling and should give us all pause. But obviously, it's not really a proper sector. By which I mean it's vital – perhaps even more vital than the others – in just the same way that the Paralympics is perhaps more important than the Olympics.

But out of the two other sectors – which I'm certainly not going to call "the main two sectors" because that's, I think, a really unimaginative way of looking at the vital voluntary sector – the private one has got to be the best, right? It's like the free west, while the public sector is the Soviet Union but without the nuclear threat: all drab suits, grey offices, unattractive women and queues. You get a sense of concrete and drizzle, flares and puddles, all very 70s, whereas the private sector is dynamic and 80s. It's much more Dynasty, more Howards' Way, more using-proper-nouns-as-adjectives. It's fax machines and swimming pools, shoulder pads and telling people where to stick it, in both professional and sexual contexts.

Yes, people who work in the private sector must look at public sector workers in disbelief. How did you end up there, they must think. What personality cocktail of laziness, self-loathing and intractable mediocrity would have led you to try to make your fortune (your incredibly modest fortune, albeit with overgenerous pension provision made possible only by tying the hands of enterprise) in that gloomy bureaucratic Mariana trench, far from the nourishing rays of the profit motive? How did the sorting hat of fate come to put you in life's Hufflepuff (but with a touch of Slytherin thrown in when it comes to local government contracts)?

Those are the sort of questions that Carl Lygo, the chief executive of BPP, Britain's only run-for-profit university, must have to bite his tongue to stop himself asking when talking to other educators. And he has been talking to them: he's been discussing the possibility of running the business side of at least 10 publicly funded universities, going into "partnership" with them. They'd still make all the academic decisions, while BPP would deal with the admin. But isn't this an uneven partnership? It lacks a shared aim. One half wants to run a good university, the other wants to make money. If a marriage is a partnership, isn't this like getting hitched to a hooker?

Or maybe it's just paying for goods and services. As Lygo says: "Most universities are running at high costs and don't properly utilise their buildings. The private sector is better at procurement, because they are keener at negotiating better prices." That's the key argument in favour of outsourcing and subcontracting and other expressions for an institution giving up roles it was constituted to fulfil: the public sector is so congenitally wasteful that a private company will always be able to undercut it – that the inherent public-sector inefficiency equates to more than the profit the subcontractor takes.

There are certainly many circumstances where this is true. There is little doubt that state funding changes an institution's attitude to money and can increase its propensity for waste. But I think it's a big jump from that observation to the current orthodoxy that the public sector's flabby inefficiency and the private's dynamic productivity are inevitable and universal – that the private sector possesses some kind of magic which, by dint of being paid by the state, no one in public service has access to; that the private sector is always brilliant and the public always useless.

I suspect Lygo of subscribing to this view when he says: "We have got a lot of universities in the UK and not all are in a strong financial position… the private provider would add expertise in the back-office functions." What expertise? Expertise in administering, say, Bristol University that the people currently administering Bristol University don't possess but a new company that's never done it before is going to be brimming with? Won't they just employ the same people to do the job but pay them less or sack a few? Is that what he means by expertise?

It's not expertise, it's ruthlessness, it's the prioritisation of profit. What Lygo is offering people running universities is the opportunity to divest themselves of many of the problems inherent in their jobs. If you don't want to take the tough decisions, he's saying, if you doubt you've got the backbone to make the efficiency savings, then we'll handle them for you. Pass your troubles on to those of us untroubled by conscience. Not only would this be a dereliction of the universities' duty, it would also help perpetuate the myth of the private sector's omnipotence and the public's doltish money-burning idiocy.

The private sector caused the credit crunch, the financial crisis, the global recession. The public sector bailed out the banks and brought the world back from the brink of ruin. When our railways were in public hands, they were shabby, unreliable and loss-making. In private hands, they still are but public money ends up in the hands of shareholders and the tickets cost vastly more. The NHS is the most efficient health service of its peers despite having, up till now, much less private sector involvement than they do. The armed forces remain in the public sector and people seldom have cause to criticise their efficiency or commitment.

Having said all that, Brent council is useless and the world glitters with the achievements of private enterprise: from smart phones to cappuccinos, from cheap fridges to full supermarkets, from Viagra to Vegas, the by-products of the profit drive have given hundreds of millions of us the lifestyles of emperors.

And, of course, the private sector is usually better at making money but, as that's its sole aim, it would be tragic if it weren't. The aims of public bodies are more complex, varied and, usually, worthwhile. We mustn't allow this necessary lack of single-mindedness to be mistaken for an inevitable lack of drive or focus.

So, if those universities with which BPP are negotiating feel they could make savings by outsourcing their back-office functions (which sounds like a euphemism for getting a colostomy bag) but would be unwilling to cut costs without being able to blame a private company, maybe that's a sign that they're the wrong savings. If not, and if failing to make such cuts jeopardises those institutions, I hope they'll find the courage to reform themselves without holding hands with a profiteer.