In 1995, Higher Education Policy published an issue dedicated to predicting what universities would look like in the 21st century. In this paper, we present a summary of those predictions made by leaders of higher education institutions and analyse how accurate they were in providing a vision of the future. The authors seemed to have guessed correctly, offering a "grand" view of the future of the university, concentrating on its role in society and economic development, which was consistent with their mandate. However, they did not analyse the consequences of change over the working conditions of academics and the private life of institutions.