The discussion on educational knowledge also entails the now classic question phrased by Herbert Spencer in his famous essay “What knowledge is most worth?” His answer was strongly utilitarian and to some extent materialistic in its outlook. But the question seems to be more and more relevant in the planning and funding of research and educational systems including all formal levels as well as life long learning. The idea of research based education at the tertiary level has since Humboldt been a regulatory idea guiding at least the European educational area. This provokes thoughts on the true connections between priorities in research policy and in educational policy. An historical and comparative overview of criteria’s of relevance of knowledge since WWII, show a larger affinity between knowledge production and educational planning in the humanities in the United States than in European. The case of the humanities (research and education) is chosen as a particularly strong case of educationally driven research, and research driven education. The argument to be followed is that in both research policy and educational policy the ideas of “what works” (functionalistic?) and performative criteria’s of knowledge production must be balanced with ideas of universal knowledge and, as it where, more speculative and critical relevance criteria’s, once so prominent in defining the specific ethos of education (Humboldt, Newman, Flexner etc.).