Both adult education and universities are having to change to respond to globalisation and the pressures of knowledge societies this is proving difficult for some universities that have traditionally taught discipline-based knowledge and whose main student body has been young adults. Now the demands for continuing education for adults are coming from a knowledge-based work force. Universities are being forced to become institutions of lifelong learning having a greater proportion of adult students than young adult undergraduates. These social conditions are generating epistemological problems, including the nature of accepted and legitimated knowledge, which is also changing the way universities teach and assess knowledge. Two major epistemological dilemmas are explored here. First, following the work of Scheler, local and universal(modern) knowledge is examined. Second, knowledge is becoming more practical and the relationship between theory and practice redefined. Universities have traditionally taught theory, but now they are faced with the demand practical knowledge. Consequently, it will be shown here that one of the new paradigms for adult education for the 21 century is also one of the new paradigms for higher education.