In this article, the author stresses the danger of losing the concept of education in favour of lower notions of instruction and training. By "training" he means a process that suggests the acquisition of skills and the enhancing of performance capacities. By "instruction" he means learning facts and new information--the results of retention. Too often, states McKernan, even those in universities confuse training and instruction with pure "education." Traditional (basic) research, what may be thought of as "blue sky" inquiry in the human and social sciences, is being viewed as inappropriate in favour of applied scientific "evidence-based" research methodologies where grant money is being currently channeled. The problem is that the grey philistines who are "running" the colleges and universities claim, falsely, to be businessmen running enterprises that will bring greater economic growth and riches through applied research--not "blue sky" inquiry. The author believes that there are very real possibilities that education can be reclaimed from these "grey philistines and merchants of managerialism." The idea of a university is that it is a community of scholars having a discourse, using a variety of research methods "appropriate to their discipline" to advance knowledge, to contribute to searching for truth through inquiry, to conduct teaching of this knowledge and these methods, so that students can get into perspective the knowledge that they "do not yet possess" and to offer service to the university and the community. The main thing is to permit academic freedom in the pursuit of these inquiries. Academic freedom means that lecturers and professors have an unfettered right to select materials and methods appropriate to their discipline and the right to conduct research that matches their curiosity and interests.