I have attended and participated in a large number of conferences about higher education over the last decade and I cannot recall the word flexible being in the title of any of them; that itself is a thought to which I will return. Yet, as I turned the word over in my mind, I knew I had heard it somewhere before. The answer came as I opened the latest missive from my favourite credit card company: “Access, your flexible friend”, it said. Industry, or at least commerce it would seem, is ahead of higher education in linking access to flexibility. Nor is this a flippant remark; for there is at the heart of our concerns today a great irony and, for those of us in higher education, not a little pain. It is high time to discuss how the use of credit accumulation and transfer, together with other flexible approaches to learning, can enable higher education to better meet the needs of industry. It is an important subject, one that is as vital for the future of higher education as it is for that of industry.