Higher education has grown from an elite to a mass system across the world. In Europe and the USA, increased rates of participation occurred in the decades after the Second World War. Between 2000 and 2014, rates of participation in higher education almost doubled from 19% to 34% across the world among the members of the population in the school-leaving age category (typically 18-23). The dramatic expansion of higher education has been marked by a wider range of institutions of higher learning and a more diverse demographic of students. Changes from an elite system to a mass higher education system are associated with political needs to build a specialised workforce for the economy. In theory, the expansion of higher education to develop a highly skilled workforce should diminish the role of examinations in the selection and control of students, initiating approaches to assessment which enable lifelong learning: assessment for learning and a focus on feedback for development. In reality, socio-political changes to expand higher education have set up a ‘field of contradictions’ for assessment in higher education. Mass higher education requires efficient approaches to assessment, such as examinations and multiple-choice quizzes, with minimalist, impersonal, or standardised feedback, often causing students to focus more on grades than feedback. In contrast, the relatively small numbers of students in elite systems in the past allowed for closer relationships between students and their teachers, with formative feedback shaping the minds, academic skills, and even the characters of students.