In 2016 and early 2017, a number of articles were referenced on the TJ Ryan Foundation website about the current state and future of higher education. Examples included Dean Ashenden’s Inside Story article ‘Powerhouse or Gravy Train?’, which argued that credentialism has been a driving and distorting force in the expansion of higher education, and John Quiggin’s Inside Story article ‘In Praise of Credentialism’, which was, in part at least, a response to Ashenden. Roger Scott in his TJ Ryan Foundation research paper lamented the ‘the politics of inertia and delay’ in higher education. Now Australian researcher, Simon Marginson, has published an ambitious new book on higher education internationally, which sets out to re-theorise what higher education is and re-imagine what it could be.