Over the course of its ninety-yearhistory a great deal of time and energy has beendevoted at the University of Natal to trying tounderstand the best way to administer and manage aunitary University whose two main campuses are fiftymiles apart. In the early 1990s, after decades ofgradual separation of the campuses, the massivechanges taking place in South Africa, as experiencedin Higher Education, prompted a major review of themanagement, administrative and committee structureswithin the University. This review, whoserecommendations were accepted and implemented,advocated a formal process of administrative andbudgetary devolution to the two campuses in Durban andPietermaritzburg. Five years later, in the face offurther external pressures, a new review recommendedthat the devolution be reversed and a stronglycentralised structure be put in place. Thisrecommendation, in turn, was approved and implemented. This article outlines the reasoning behind both setsof recommendations and explores the pros and cons fora multi-campus university of both centralisation anddevolution in the light of the experience of auniversity which has gained first-hand knowledge ofboth alternatives in less than a decade.