This study examines responses to the COVID-19 pandemic among different sectors and types of institutions in the Brazilian higher education system. We aim to analyse how institutions faced the pandemic; what policies or institutional actions were proposed; and by which institutions/institutional types? What rationales justify these proposals? Are there similarities among actions? Based on the concepts of institutional logics and embedded institutional agency, empirical narratives collected in documents from institutions and previous research were organised to make sense of otherwise disparate initiatives. Drawing upon the literature on institutional positioning in higher education and using the latest Brazilian national higher education census, we built a typology of institutions focusing on four dimensions associated with policy responses to the pandemic: the educational profile, research involvement, structural characteristics of institutions, and social inclusion policies. We further complement the data set on the institutional landscape of higher education with institutional documents, interviews, and reports, as well as the extensive news coverage collected by students and researchers at Laboratory for Research into Higher Education (LAPES), in order to provide the empirical elements for the analysis of policies and institutional actions.