Education in a broad sense refers to all the things we learn to do inside families, households and society. In this chapter, we explore how people in countries like Australia have taken a universal social practice like education and redefined it as ‘schooling’. We begin by establishing why Australians made schooling a near-universal part of the experience of children in the late nineteenth century. We then ask how sociologists have understood the evolution of modern schooling. Turning to the past few decades, we focus on the way a pervasive sense of social and economic crisis played a role in the decision to make schooling something in which the great majority of fi ve- to 21-year-olds engage. We then consider the university sector and establish why small institutions catering to an elite have become a mass system. Finally, we refl ect on the university experience of increasing numbers of students.