In recent times, discussions about higher education have come to be marked and indeed dominated by the discourse of competences and capabilities. Educational policy is now driven to a large extent by economic concerns, and is increasingly based on an instrumental and functionalist perspective, in which the primary purpose of education in general and higher education in particular is to furnish learners with the key skills necessary for the transition to and successful participation in economic and professional life. This perspective is rejected by many both within and outside educational circles who argue that education needs to be about more than the development of generic transferable skills and needs to serve wider purposes than simply preparing the next generation to take their position in the workforce. Competences and capabilities, at least as they are currently generally understood, are simply not enough. This paper will argue that a solution to this impasse over the purpose of higher education may lie not in the abandonment of capabilities but in the adoption of an alternative concept of capabilities, namely that set out by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum in their capabilities approaches. For Sen and Nussbaum, capabilities are more than demonstrable and measurable skill sets; a person's capability set covers all of things that person can be and do, and capability development should provide the individual with the opportunity and freedom to live a life he or she has reason to value. The paper will examine both Sen's and Nussbaum's capabilities approaches as well as their connection to education. Taking Ireland as its example case, it will turn this 'alternative capabilities' lens on higher education to see just how compatible existing policy and practice is with Sen's and Nussbaum's approaches, and where higher education policy hinders or restricts the opportunities for 'valuable beings and doings' which both capabilities approaches advocate. The paper will also consider how adopting this alternative capabilities perspective in educational development could work as an antidote to at least some of the ills and offer potential solutions to at least some of the challenges facing higher education in Ireland and in general at the beginning of the twenty first century.