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ABSTRACTDifferentiation has gained widespread acceptance across the Ontario policy community as a mechanism that can improve the overall quality of the PSE system. Though much has been said locally about the supposed benefits of differentiation, including its ability to reduce programme duplication and boost institutional efficiency, little attention has been given to the challenges that promoting differentiation will present. Drawing on insights from the field of Organization Studies, this piece outlines how institutionalized environments, and the behaviour they prescribe, actively suppress the ‘natural’ occurrence of differentiation. In turn, it presents strategies that can be employed by policymakers to maximize institutional compliance with differentiation policies, as well as a series of peripheral tactics they can employ to disrupt the isomorphic forces within the university sector.