The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, chaired by Sir Ron Dearing, published its report, Higher Education in the Learning Society, on 24 July 1997. The Committee had been charged to ‘make recommendations on how the purposes, shape, size and structure of higher education, including support for students, should develop to meet the needs of the United Kingdom over the next 20 years’. Sir David Watson was a member of the committee. In his inaugural lecture he looks back at the circumstances giving rise to the Report, outlines the fate of its nearly 100 recommendations, and identifies key lines of development within UK higher education throughout the past decade.