While for many, the introduction of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) foretold the end of traditional approaches to higher education, various settlements regarding the ‘idea of a university’ would not be seriously imperilled on global scale until the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) surfaced in early 2020, everywhere. Like other organisations, universities now interacted preponderantly online amidst growing economic, political and social disruption. Almost everything changed, seemingly overnight. To what extent could universities draw on the body of higher education research to pivot in the face of this shape-shifting emergency, and reconcile a COVID-normal?