I am quite sure that the ethics issue is central to my interest. It is not verbotten to speak of ethics in a classroom here. It is rather, in fact, encouraged.

In our International BBA program that I teach in, we have been working and changing things. The program will have its first graduates this year and over the last 3 years we have learned a lot in terms of the different things we need to do here to be able to do this kind of program.

I guess about 6 months ago, I asked the Dean, If he had employers in front of him, how would he want to market our BBA graduates. He said that he would want to be able to say 5 things: 1) they were ethical, 2) they they were diligent, 3) had a reasonable command of English, 4)they had good, solid introductions to basic management skills and 5) they were computer literate. That sounded great and doable to me.

Since that time we have added a year to the program to make the entire first year non-business fundamentals: English, ENGLISH and MORE ENGLISH plus problem solving skills, study skills, time management tools, computer skills etc. We have instituted a plagiarism policy that makes the program a cheat free zone: 1 infraction = 0, 2nd you are out of the program. Every course is required to have 20% of the mark for diligence - Do they do the reading? Do they do the homework? are they participating and asking questions? Are assignments on time? Attendance? Miss 20% of the classes and you fail the course.

I have been doing some research on how to help them solve some of their learning deficiencies. I found a wonderful book on teaching math done by the National Science Foundation and free on the net! There is a great introduction about how people learn and metacognition skills. I have been talking today about how we can ground this program on core issues and those will likely be ethics related.

Buddhist ethics are taught in schools here. It works mainly (I think) because Buddhist ethics are pretty acceptable to any religious tradition - don't kill, don't lie, cheat or steal, and make it your job to alleviate suffering in yourself and those around you. Imagine business managers who behaved like that!!!!

Everything we do in life has an ethical factor whether we choose to recognize it or not or whether we call it that or something else. I have been quickly re-evaluating my Economics class in these terms (Classes start on Monday so I don't have much time!) I think it works and I am getting excited about teaching it. I think it gives them a central point to tie all of their studies together. I think it might help them learn the material easier.

I hope...