Discussions of the problematic future of higher education were already an exploding industry before COVID-19, producing more to be read than anyone could possibly keep up with. Into that pre-coronavirus maelstrom came Bryan Alexander's "Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education" (see ED603630). The author identifies two fundamental flaws in this book, which it shares with conventional futurist methodology: first, its tacit assumption that historical change is a consistently evolutionary process; and second, the lack of a precise understanding of historical causation. The author addresses periods of paradigm shift and causation, then considers the already deeply problematic crisis of early 21st century higher education, into which came coronavirus--a universal disrupter "par excellence," leaving no institution or custom unchanged, imposing radical doubts about the future, and in particular forcing re-inventions of traditional practices under new and still unsettled current and future constraints.