Explore the argument
Who caused the crisis?
Responsibility is distributed across policy choices, regulators, governing bodies and institutional strategies.
The key pointA systemic explanation can identify responsibility without pretending that every institution made equally good decisions.
Arguments about university finance often collapse into a choice between blaming government and blaming vice-chancellors. The evidence points to a more demanding answer.
Rules and responses
Government and regulators shaped prices, incentives and constraints. Institutions still chose how quickly to grow, how much to borrow and how much risk to accept.
Different kinds of responsibility
The completed explainer will separate responsibility for creating the model, operating within it, supervising risk and responding once the vulnerabilities became clear.
That makes it possible to judge decisions without losing sight of why similar patterns appeared across the sector.