Have universities learned how to be ready for a crisis? Universities, along with most other complex organisations, have endured a very tough year. When a crisis strikes – and make no mistake COVID-19 constitutes a crisis – an organisation is compelled to confront the reality of how well its systems and processes function, what it could do better and where its vulnerabilities remain. Universities responded in different ways to the disruption of ‘business as usual’ caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some dallied while others rushed into new ways of doing things before they were sufficiently ready. It would be fair to say that many were unsure how to best respond because of a deficiency of information or the amount of divergent information available, or an absence of national direction or an overall lack of clarity of strategy witnessed in many places.