AbstractThe so‐called ‘dialogue’ between Government and higher education is bedeviled with mutual incomprehension of the difficulties of the other, and in the case of many in higher education a failure to appreciate how and why the political climate has altered since the euphoria and expansion of the 1960s. Both sides are victims of changes in attitudes and expectations which many have not filly grasped, and there has been a persistent failure to pose, and attempt to answer, the vital question as to what higher education is really for. The author, a former Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and Professorial Fellow of Sussex University, MP for Cambridge since 1976 and, between 1979 and December 1985, Liaison Officer for Higher and Further Education, has been in the unique position of being on both