With respect to the supply of programs in Dutch higher education, the last fifteen years have been quite turbulent. In the higher professional education sector (HBO), one of the two sectors of the binary system, a remarkable proliferation of study programs characterized the period from 1985 to 1990. Between 1988 and 1993, the university sector showed a large number of innovations. By and large, two different reactions were expressed in the policy debate on these growth processes. The higher education organizations and their buffer organizations explained the growth by pointing at necessary adjustments to developments in the labor market, the professions, and the academic disciplines. On the other hand, government and employers' organizations expressed their concern about the transparency of the supply. Whereas government since the 1950s, encouraged differentiation within and between study programs, it feared that the proliferation of programs in the more recent period would have a negative impact on student choice. Government assumed that students wouldn't see the wood for the trees. Employers' organizations were afraid of too much specialization, which would hinder the flexibility of the workforce. In the debate on causes and consequences, those against the proliferation put forward that the program innovations were not so much expressions of "necessary" change, but often the result of copying behavior. They claimed that higher education organizations imitate each other's innovations (but changing the name of the product or the content somewhat) in the struggle for shares of the student market.