This piece offers two stories and attempts a contrast between them. These are about how UK higher education responded to the economic crisis of the 1970s, and about how it is shaping up in response to the banking crisis of 2008 and its global ramifications. The first is constructed around the rise and fall of "public sector higher education" between the James Report and the Dearing Report of 1997. The second looks at the prospects of higher education's contributions to a more fluid, flexible and responsive lifelong learning, summed up as "post-institutional higher education".