Lewis Elton is Visiting Professor of Higher Education, University of Manchester, Honorary Professor of Higher Education, University College London, Professor Emeritus of Higher Education, University of Surrey, Fellow of the American Institute of Physics and of the Society for Research into Higher Education. He holds Doctorates (honoris causa) of the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of Gloucestershire. He has been presented with a Festschrift by his former students [P. Ashwin (ed), ‘Changing Higher Education: The Development of Learning and Teaching’, Routledge Education], and received the Times Higher Lifetime Award, 2005. In recent years he has developed a Postgraduate course on ‘Research and Development in Higher Education’ for experienced academic teachers through distance learning and he has been the External Examiner for similar courses at the Universities of Oxford and Hong Kong and at the Dublin Institute of Technology. His latest work is concerned with the balance between collegial and ‘top down’ management in universities.