Agenda 2030 for sustainable development focuses attention on lifelong learning opportunities for all. The new targets expand on their predecessors, the Millennial Development Goals, by both widening and deepening the scope of system‐wide quality education systems. Whilst the Millennial Development Goals focused attention on universal primary attainment, the Sustainable Development Goals introduce tertiary education into the global development agenda. Higher education was an important consideration in the 2000 Dakar framework, but it was not included as a target. Instead, it appeared indirectly as a supportive pathway to other goals such as youth skills or quality teacher. Now, higher education plays a key role as a means to achieving Goal 4 on education: inclusive, equitable and quality education for all. This article evaluates the introduction of higher education into the development agenda and the introduction of the SDGs into the parallel but fragmented multilateral and university agendas. It concludes by specifying two factors that are essential if higher education is to play a revitalised role in the sustainable development framework: publicly‐funded research and regional higher education partnerships.