The rapidly shifting higher education policy agenda in the aftermath of the students' movement of 2011 in Chile and its mismatch with Chile's research capacities in the field of higher education studies are analyzed to illustrate how research is path dependent on policy. I argue that a stable policy environment, where change is only marginal or incremental, begets research problems and questions squarely situated within the boundaries of the established rules of the game. Conversely, whenever policy swerves considerably off its expected path, knowledge may not be available to illuminate policy-making. The motif of disassociation between the policy field in the making with the availability of knowledge to support it is probed via the analysis of two policy proposals currently in Chile's new government agenda: introducing tuition-free higher education and assuming greater state oversight of teacher education programs.