In her essay ‘Towards a woman-centred university’, Adrienne Rich (1979) notes that she is concerned ‘not with an ideal future, but with some paths towards it’ (p 147). In this chapter, we summarise our proposals, which are made in the same spirit. Most of these suggestions are explored at greater length in the chapters that follow. We say more about funding in this chapter, because it is so central to debates about higher education in the UK at present, but also because it can obscure equally important issues. Our hope, having addressed a funding model here, is to create space for other questions.

There have been a number of attempts recently to think about how we can ‘ensure higher education leaves nobody behind’, as it was articulated in a recent report by UNESCO (2017). Indeed, Penny Jane Burke’s idea of a ‘right’ to higher education (2012) is increasingly becoming a reality:

UNESCO’s report concludes (p 10) with six proposals for all university systems:

• • clear equity targets;

• • a legal framework;

• • steering and monitoring agencies to enforce regulation;

• • a level playing field for admission;

• • tuition fees combined with means-tested loans and grants;

• • limited student repayments.

Our suggestions draw on this framework, especially in the desire to rethink admissions and limit students’ financial contribution. However, our proposals go beyond UNESCO’s, in order to address challenges that we think will determine the future of higher education over the coming decades, including very rapid changes in the uses of technology and the nature of professional life, as well as growing inequalities. We argue that there should be a redistribution of higher education, in different proportions and at different stages of people’s lives, across the whole adult population. Our hope is thus to think beyond a regulatory framework for ‘access’, since this continues to imply some policing of the borders of the university. In our system, equity would become a central pillar of the pedagogy and practice of institutions, a starting point rather than an afterthought.