Like many senior teacher-educators and educational researchers, John Furlong has faced in several directions throughout his career, sometimes simultaneously. He has clearly not lost his enthusiasm for what happens in the classroom: he strongly appreciates those magical moments which can happen at any time, and which keep teachers going. He loves to work with student teachers, morphing back and forth between his "personae" as grizzled veteran and everlasting apprentice. But he is also deeply conscious of where and how education sits in the enterprise of higher education writ large. Especially in his latest book--"Education: an anatomy of the discipline"--he is a cold-eyed analyst of teacher-training and educational research within the university (or previously--for "we are all universities now"--the college) (Furlong, 2013). In this article principal and professor Davis Watson first traces the history of the "professional" aspect of the university project. He goes on to compare teaching, social work, education, and nursing as all being among the fields responsible for their professional formation and among those that have come under strain as the services they seek to provide buckle under the weight of both political tinkering and the drive for austerity. Watson concludes that education's "university project" is vital, and it is comforting that, even in the apparently most unpromising times, it has its champions like John Furlong.