Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Undergraduate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Undergraduate. Show all posts

Friday, February 6, 2015

Harvard Tells Profs Not to Sleep With Undergrads

By John Lauerman
Bloomberg Business
Originally posted February 5, 2015

Harvard University banned professors from having “sexual or romantic relationships” with undergraduates, joining a list of campuses that have taken similar steps.

Many colleges discourage but don’t ban sex between professors and students. While a national professors’ group doesn’t favor such a prohibition, recent moves by Harvard, Yale University and the University of Connecticut suggest the tide may be turning.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Ethics of Admission, Pt. II: Undergraduates and the Brass Ring

By Jane Robbins
Inside Higher Ed
Originally posted February 26, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

But what about students? Is it worth the chance at the brass ring? One could say there is no choice but get on the merry-go-round—and that is certainly what they are being told. But if we know that many will not get a shot because of where they are placed or when they got on or whether, metaphorically, they lack the height compared to the one behind them to reach the ring, is the current approach wrong—in both the incorrect and immoral senses of the word?

The inevitable is, of course, happening: people are beginning to question the value of a college degree for them as individuals. This is why, counterintutively, the push for the current wage data approach to value is completely wrong-headed and also, I think unethical. It is the individual that has been lost in the wholesale approach to commodity credentials and wage comparison, a particularly perverse kind of educational “channeling.” In the service of whose interests is, for example, the tireless emphasis on STEM and the disparagement of arts? Who will care when large percentages with STEM credentials can’t find jobs, experience depressed wages because there are so many of them, and find themselves with no transferable skills or habits of mind when technology moves on? If it is going to be difficult to find a job anyway, one should at least have followed one’s own interests. Education should allow you to choose your work, not vice versa.

On the constant merry-go-round, we seem to have forgotten that college, or any other education at any level except technical and some forms of professional education, is not to get a job, and certainly not to get a particular job. That is what trade school is for. We should be encouraging students who want a particular job -- a vocation -- to train elsewhere, perhaps with the idea of getting more and broader education at a later time.

The rest of the blog post is here.