The following paper proposes a discipline-affirming response to the challenge facing higher education in the context of the knowledge economy. It resists the drive to reduce the value of a humanities based education to the mere production of skills and instead affirms the substantial body of knowledge of specific disciplines. It uses as its model the degree programme in Philosophical Studies at Newcastle University in order to show how a discipline-affirming approach to learning has the advantage of not only developing and making students aware of educational skills that can contribute to the knowledge economy, but doing so without downgrading the worth of the knowledge and concepts of the students' discipline. The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate that a learner involved in a personalised, object-based project will not view the acquisition of knowledge as merely a means to an end and also be able to communicate the value of the knowledge gained to laypeople. (Contains 9 tables and 7 notes.)