This book began as a collection of papers presented at a conference entitled ‘The Future Business of Higher Education’ held at Oxford University. The contributions range from those who grapple with the question of what a University should do, through those concerned with making Higher Education more efficient, to some who were already planning for some technologically inevitable virtual future. These disparate leanings led to inevitable conflict and a challenge in editing into book form. In compiling and editing the chapters the editor has tried to preserve some of the diversity of opinion presented at Oxford. By doing so it is apparent that some individual contributors would find unacceptable much of what others in the book have to say. The traditionalists clash with the modernizers, the Left with the Right, Public with Private and the theorists with the practitioners. It is this very divergence of philosophical opinion as to the future of Higher Education that makes this book such an enjoyable and stimulating read.