The shift to a mass system of higher education has imposed immense pressures on teachers, students and educational institutions, but relatively little has been done to articulate and address the changes in pedagogy required. In this critique of the prevailing orthodoxy, Geoffrey Elliott explores the imperatives of a mass system through data drawn from a study of access- and foundation-year students and their teachers. He focuses attention on the implications and implementation of the Dearing, Kennedy and Fryer reports and the potential impact of new technology on education. Arguing that our present conceptions of education are narrow and market-led, he proposes an alternative, pedagogy-based system to establish a society truly capable of lifelong learning.