We are witnessing the most significantchanges in the nature of the relationship between nursing education and higher education. However, there has yet to be a more philosophical explanation of what it would mean for our aims and practices as nurse educators if we were to take seriously the notion of nursing education within the context of higher education. This paper analyses the role of the university and raises the questions: What should higher education mean today? What should higher education mean for nursing? In response to the former question it is suggested there cannot be a total distinction between the concept 'higher education' and the socio-political context. Higher education has to be realized in particular historical societies and there is likely to be much controversy over how this should be done. In response to the latter question it is suggested that to warrant the title nursing 'higher education' the process should promise a freeing of the mind but also beyond, to bring about a new level of self-empowerment in the individual student. In essence, it should contain an emancipatory element. It is the articulation of normative aspirations such as these, that is so strikingly absent from so much of the debate relating to nursing education merging with higher education. Nursing education must not however fall victim to 'academic drift' which has often been regarded as a distinctive and persistent feature of higher education. It might be proposed that student nurses who move from an educational to a practice setting are subjected to 'a competing paradigm of occupational vocationalism'. Criticisms such as these have led to a reconceptualization of the theory-practice dichotomy and partnership in training and education between the 'trainers' and practising professionals. What is needed is a new model of nursing education. A model which is an amalgam of both the liberal and vocational educational traditions. Implementations of such a model would demand that the curriculum is organised around problem-based learning. This means adopting a curriculum in which 'knowing how' and 'knowing that' forms of knowledge are equally emphasized. Simultaneously, student' and practitiones' contextual knowledge would be advanced by collaborative research between educationalists and practitiones. The implication is for nursing education to be based more in the reality of practice. © 1995 Pearson Professional Ltd.
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