Speculative reform jumps the gun on notions of data-driven reform, requiring administrators to anticipate and act to ensure problems (and the data that would show them) do not materialize. Speculative reforms are incapable of delivering the outcomes they promise, as they are fueled by a fear of the future that their reforms do not extinguish. In order to slip this trap and build better higher education systems, the author suggests that policy must turn from anticipation and an orientation to preempting feared outcomes to supporting relentless experimentations in practice rooted in hope and affirmation.