The tendency to construct grand narratives makes participants in education politics unaware of the particularities of marginalized fields such as music education. One prominent reason for this trend is the discrepancy between the values underpinning education politics and the values of higher music education. This article discusses this problem by drawing on five concepts from the literature on quality in higher education: quality of teaching and learning, disciplinary competencies, relevance quality, generic competencies, and employability. The author proposes the idea of an "education policy of the particular," which conceives of education politics and higher music education as two self-referential but intercommunicative systems. Finally, some of the challenges and possible outcomes of such politics for higher music education are discussed. (Contains 1 figure.)