Quality teaching is increasingly prioritized in higher education. One reason is that government funding requires students to succeed in their studies and be ready for employment. In response, educators throughout the Western world have generated large quantities of evidence-based, practical, often uncritical research about what works to improve teaching, learning and student success. Much of this research carries the label "student engagement." But student engagement is a complex construct used to identify what students do, think and feel when learning and how teachers can improve that doing, thinking and feeling in instructional settings. Despite its extensive coverage of learning and teaching, the paper asks whether something is missing from student engagement. It recognizes the complexity of the engagement construct and examines its key ideas but identifies three missing elements: critique; learning agency/democracy; as well as purposes, knowledge and values that transcend powerful political discourses in neo-liberal times.