In this Point of Departure, we build on the scholarship of Suellen Shay. Shay explored the nature of higher education, examining assessment and the relation between curriculum and knowledge structures across several disciplines. She drew on the work of Bernstein and in her later work responded to the calls for decolonisation. We first contextualise the work of Basil Bernstein and explain its attraction for scholars of education development in the South African HE context. We then provide a brief summary of recent decolonial scholarship. On this basis, we speculate what a critique and caricature of the Bernsteinian tradition by the decolonial school might look like. In turn we offer a caricatured rebuttal by the Bernsteinian school to the decolonial critique. Finally, we pull our argument together and, by drawing on Bhaskar's critical realism, assert the importance of an adequate theorisation of ontology.