Some of these problems cannot be solved by any single institution acting well. They are coordination problems, and coordination problems punish whoever moves first.
This chapter sets out what the sector would have to do together. Buy common things commonly, which is obvious and still largely undone. Build shared services as genuine experiments — small, evaluated, allowed to fail — rather than as ceremonies with a launch event and no exit criteria. Agree the dictionary before arguing about the numbers, because a great deal of sector disagreement turns out to be definitional. Stop hiding the research subsidy, which cannot be defended while it remains unstated.
And draw a boundary with government: be explicit about which things the sector will own, so that it can credibly refuse the things it should not.
The test is not whether universities say they collaborate, but whether an agreement changes what they do.
Regulated to Fail, Chapter 17
Where this goes next
This is the question the chapter opens with and the mechanism it identifies. What it concludes — and what follows from it — is in the book.
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