Market systems require exit. A market where nothing can fail is not disciplining anyone. English higher education was built on that logic — and then discovered that a university is an unusually difficult thing to close.
Students mid-degree hold a promise that has to be honoured somewhere. The regulator that would oversee the failure is also the body that authorised the provider, which makes it a referee standing on the pitch. The institution is frequently the largest employer and a significant landlord in its city. Its records must outlive it, because a degree certificate has to remain verifiable for fifty years. Merger, the preferred alternative, is its own slow and expensive form of death.
And the politics of blame arrive well before the end. This chapter sets out what an honest exit regime would have to admit.
It is whether the system can handle failure without treating students as exposed claimants on promises everyone else helped to make.
Regulated to Fail, Chapter 13
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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