ABSTRACT
As a bureaucracy, higher education is ill-suited to make rapid changes such as those demanded by COVID-19. In this chapter, we draw on Weber, Lenski, Durkheim, Garfinkel, and Sanford to explain bureaucraticity, or the bureaucratic culture and mindset; how its norms of assembly, rules, rule-makers, rule-enforcers, and standards were disrupted by the onset of the international pandemic in March 2020; and how some types of bureaucratic norms and actors worsened, rather than improved, institutional response to the pandemic. We suggest avenues for further research into remedies for bureaucracies when confronted with unavoidable and sudden change, noting that novel problems demand nuanced solutions, and this creates a conflict for bureaucracies, where simple, rapid solutions are the default.
