Reforms in the governance of higher education institutions in Kazakhstan to foster higher quality higher education systems, granting greater institutional autonomy, provide an opportunity to study the implementation challenges in moving from centralised systems controlled by Ministries to ones where institutions can pursue their destinies. This case suggests that moving towards a more autonomous system comes at a cost. Being free to set institutional strategies brings the possibility of making mistakes, something many leaders who have been trained in a compliance-based system find daunting. Further, if leaders have never operated in a more market-based system, their ability to scan the environment to determine and launch new initiatives can be a challenge. Such pressures can result in institutions reverting to compliance-based models which signal to the larger society that they are being responsible and faithful to prior norms of behaviour. In contrast, autonomy requires different systems of accountability.