Popular music education is becoming firmly established as an academic field, in the UK and internationally. In order to help ensure that scholarship and practice within the field develop in reflexive and ethical ways appropriate to particular traditions, musics, people and institutional contexts, the authors advocate a discursive and iterative approach to the question of what it means to be "authentic" across higher popular music education (HPME). With reference to current research, policy and industry documentation, the authors present a discussion framed by theories concerning authenticity in the domains of the vocational and academic, employability, music, gender, and pedagogy. The authors conclude that institutions and individuals working in higher popular music education have a responsibility to place the issue of authenticity at the center of pedagogy, curriculum design, institutional strategy and disciplinary knowledge share, in order for the field to develop in ways that are beneficial to all involved.