Economics education in a post-pandemic world

This short article focuses on the challenges of the COVID pandemic for colleges and universities in the USA. After framing one of the serious institutional and ethical problems brought on by the pandemic, the theoretical work of Karl Polanyi and the observations of Frank Bruni and Brian Rosenberg are considered to further analyse the relation between the provision of public goods, the dynamics of higher educational institutions, and the targets of instrumental rationality in society. © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.