The future of higher education is more uncertain now than it has ever been and it is interesting to examine and speculate as to causes and possible results. Values and sanctions that have previously motivated unquestioned acceptance of the legitimacy of higher education are, like many other values and sanctions in our society, presently undergoing severe scrutiny and modification. Consider those former students who bought the sanctions of schooling with all the requisite obedience to authority, competition for grades and recognition, perseverance at tedious and often meaningless school work: How will these educated, analytical people respond as taxpayers to paying the salaries of professors whom they most remember as aloof and concerned primarily with tenure, research, and publications? It may become difficult for these taxpayers to willingly support an elitist subculture. It may well be that we are in an evolutionary process that will yield a conception of life-long learning as a social good. Perhaps as we witness the demise of education in its present forms we are also seeing the process by which our culture will become democratic. (Author/MSE)