Tertiary-level educational provision is being increasingly fragmented by government policies, with malign consequences for students and institutions. As currently constituted, higher education works to entrench inequalities and devalue qualifications, while bipartisanship around the future of further education risks reprising past failures. What is needed is to replace market-driven expansion and competition with regional cooperation in order to reintegrate the system and rediscover the purpose of education at tertiary level. An expectation of, and an entitlement to, local/regional adult further and higher continuing education should be integral to school leaving. The system should be founded on a common general but not academic schooling up to age 18, linked to the assumption of democratic citizenship.