Former Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Chris Husbands responds to the financial and policy challenges facing the English higher education by sketching out four different plausible futures: Scenario 1: The evolution of the present; Scenario 2: Delivering the 2010 vision; Scenario 3: A place-based tertiary system; Scenario 4: A differentiated system. All four Scenarios confront difficult challenges, but they are designed to help university leaders as they wrestle with strategic and budgetary planning and as they consider the future development of the whole higher education sector.