‘Education, education, education’. The Blairite slogan appears on the face of it uncontroversial and designed to attract universal electoral support. We all ‘know’that education is important as a means to success in a meritocratic society, that qualifications are increasingly crucial for accessing a good career and that university education continues to be rewarded with higher incomes over the course of a working life. We assume, probably rightly, that all parents want to see their children do well at school and that increasing numbers of working-class parents are joining the middle class in aspiring to a university education for their children. Yet behind this picture lies a reality of conflict and contradiction. Yes, we value university education, but what for? Is it a consumer good purchased to ensure individual prosperity or a social good designed to promote an enlightened and creative modern society? Is it a means to a job or a tool for personal fulfilment and enrichment? Should it follow the demands of the ‘free market’in its provision of courses or should it seek to structure the market in the interests of a flourishing economy and culture? Should it be open to all or confined to those who can best utilise what it offers? Who should pay: the state or parents and students? Who should control the curriculum: the academics, central government, quasi-governmental agencies or students as active consumers? These conflicts over meaning have infused debates over higher education policy since the Blairite period when New Labour first introduced university fees but have reached a crescendo under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, with the raising of fees and the allowing of private providers to enter the HE arena. While the Conservative-dominated coalition affirms its commitment to open participation and fair access, using the rhetoric of ‘free at the point of delivery’to justify the massive hike in fees to up to£ 27,000