Ethics Courses Guide Students to Just Ends

In preparing for economic success, college students sometimes overlook vital ingredients like ethics and a sound value system that are needed to give meaning to their accomplishments.

To prompt students to consider such values and the ways that their personal actions might affect not only their lives but other people, society in general and the environment, Chapman College and UC Irvine are offering new programs in ethics.

Chapman College in Orange is starting an Institute for a Study of Values, where the ethics of behavior can be explored. It is patterned after an approach being taken by other campuses, such as Harvard University, which now requires all business administration graduate students to take a course in business ethics.

The Western Center for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at UC Irvine has received grants totaling $50,000 for studies in biomedical ethics. The money will be used to study ethical issues raised by scientific and technological advances.

With recent surveys showing such large numbers of students caught up in the “me” approach, in which they put much more emphasis on financial security than on developing a philosophy by which to set life goals, it is important for colleges and universities to encourage more consideration of personal beliefs. Such introspection is vital to helping students realize the importance not just of what is acquired and achieved, but also of how it is done.

The late humorist and American conscience Will Rogers said it simply and succinctly when he noted: “I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.”