The constitutional freedom of education protects the autonomy of universities and university colleges to organise their own education and consequently decide independently on student access, programme offerings, curriculum content . However, in order to guarantee the right to education or ensure the quality of education, for example, the government can issue regulations that impose limitations on this autonomy. An analysis of legislation and parliamentary preparatory work demonstrates, however, that while doing so, the legislature has had little attention for the constitutionally protected autonomy of higher education institutions. For their part, the higher education institutions too have used their freedom of education relatively little as an argument against government action. In search for explanations for this lack of attention, I interviewed heads of Flemish universities and university colleges. Amongst others, these interviews provide insight in how they perceive their right to freedom of education, how they perceive governance steering and why they think that the freedom of education is mostly absent during the drafting of policy.