Colleges Fail at Moral Development of Students
Recent Studies Address Ethics and Academic Integrity
As reported by Peter Schmidt in The Chronicle of Higher Education, colleges have not proven effective at promoting the moral and ethical development of their students. Their efforts in this area are being undermined by their own cultures and by a failure to adopt effective approaches.
A first study by authors Matthew J. Mayhew, an assistant professor of higher education at New York University; Ernest T. Pascarella, a professor of higher education at the University of Iowa; and Tricia A. Seifert, a postdoctoral research scholar at Iowa, found that many entering college students may be at a stage at which efforts to enhance their moral-reasoning skills are likely to fail.
Incoming Students’ Level of Moral Development Must Be Considered
Dividing a group of 1,470 students at 19 colleges into one of two categories of moral development identified by psychologists – a “transitional” phase and a “consolidated” phase – the researchers found that those in the former group were more flexible in dealing with moral questions and more receptive to the content of diversity-related courses and other efforts to promote their moral development than those in the latter group.
According to the paper, a common mistake colleges make is to assume that all freshmen are in a transitional phase and it recommends a more strategic approach to efforts to enhance moral development, such as the sequencing of courses that address diversity and other issues, keeping students’ level of moral development in mind.
By College, Efforts to Promote Ethics May Be Too Late
A second study suggests that attempts to promote moral development may be too late. The authors were Muriel Bebeau, director of the Center for the Study of Ethical Development at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Yukiko Maeda, an assistant professor of educational psychology at Purdue University; and Stephen J. Thomas, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Alabama.
The researchers found that the moral trajectories of their sample group – several dozen students studied from adolescence through young adulthood – varied greatly. Moreover, the rate of their moral growth generally slowed over time.
Traditional Approaches in Higher Education Have Little Impact
A third study by George Lind, a professor of psychology at the University of Konstanz, in Germany, concluded that higher education had only a slight impact on students’ moral development, even after various efforts on the part of the university towards this end. According to Professor Lind, the only approach that caused them to make significant improvements in moral judgment was involving them in intensive discussions of moral dilemmas.
Underlying Message is that Success and Grades are What Counts
A fourth paper by Tricia L. Bertram Gallant, coordinator of the Academic Integrity Office at the University of California at San Diego, attributes the problem to internal culture. While the “horizontal dimension” of the two universities Gallant studied, that involving undergraduate education, student life, and the campus community, supported efforts to promote academic integrity, the “vertical dimension” – the academic disciplines focused on research, graduate education, external support, and prestige – undermined efforts.
As Schmidt concluded from the report, “Faculty members saw research, not teaching that would promote ethical development, as key to their advancement, and students saw grades, not the learning of ethical behavior, as key to theirs.”
As in many other arenas in American society, the root of the problem of students’ moral development seems to be the values emphasized by the larger society. Efforts at promoting academic integrity, according to Gallant, are “ineffectual in the face of more powerful messages such as 'Success by any means acceptable' and 'Money and prestige are primary.’”
References: Schmidt, Peter. “Promoting Students' Moral Development Is Devilishly Tricky, Studies Suggest.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 14, 2009.
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