Decades of reform have resulted in a system of further education that treats adults like children, with limited control over the qualifications they choose to pursue. This needs to change. Money must follow learners, not government contracts, and so create a genuinely demand-led system. The author proposes new financial and regulatory structures which allow colleges to choose exactly what to offer, including their own awards, and do away, with most existing quangos while still safeguarding quality. More importantly, there is a need to give learners direct access to education subsidies through the creation of genuine learning accounts. Learning accounts--operating like any other bank account, but used only to pay for learning-- would shift power back to the learner and help create a genuinely demand-led system.