This article analyses current educational reform documents pertaining to the role, nature and scope of tertiary education in New Zealand. The argument posited here is that these reform proposals, while signaling a welcome paradigm shift in the values that underpin higher education policy, risk marginalizing the notion and the pursuit of higher learning in the university sector. This claim is based on an analysis of how teaching in higher education is conceptualized in the reform documents, the import and status given to such an ideal, and how its realization is provided for in the practical implications of the espoused policy.