A fundamental shift is taking place in the way we think about the future of work and its relationship to education, training and the labour market. Until recently, expanding higher education was widely believed to result in higher earnings, reflecting an insatiable demand for knowledge workers. In the United Kingdom, this race to higher education included a major transfer of resources from further and adult provision to higher education. This paper raises a number of issues in rethinking tertiary education in a context of digital disruption.