You can picture two chairs, one above the other. The top chair belongs to a chancellor — an old, high title. The chair just below it belongs to the vice-chancellor. That is all the word itself says: one step down from the chancellor. What changes from place to place is how much the person in the top chair actually does. Where the chancellor only wears the robes and hands out the degrees, the person in the lower chair ends up carrying the whole job; where the chancellor really runs things, the lower chair is a genuine deputy with one area to look after. Reading this word well means asking, every time, what the chair above it is really doing.