TEACHING ETHICS IN BUSINESS SCHOOLS

What neither Linda Cunningham nor John Deckop make explicit in their opinions ("Do business schools foster a corporate climate of greed? Speak Out, November 2002) is that business schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) have since 1974 been required to "incorporate" ethics in their curricula.

It is arguably only because of this requirement that ethics has ostensibly been "taught" in business schools. What is not arguable is that in many, if not most, business programs, ethics is not in fact taught. The AACSB has standards for whether a business faculty member is "academically qualified" to teach a particular course; many, if not most, business faculty responsible for teaching ethics do not meet that standard. Business schools and the AACSB both appear satisfied with this....

The view that business school faculty, well-meaning as they may be, are not competent to teach ethics is given further credibility if one looks at the "ethics" materials contained in textbooks with chapters allegedly on ethics--as I and a co-author have, with results published in Vol. 3, No. 1 (1999) of the journal Teaching Business Ethics. Major publishers, such as Irwin/McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, and Houghton Mifflin publish textbooks that offer such quaint decision-making strategies as the "TV test" and the "significant others test," rather than introducing students to ethical theories.

Certainly, I would like business students actually to learn real ethical theories and how to apply them in business. But then I would also like world peace.

--Patricia J. O'Connor
Brooklyn, NY

POOR FAMILIES NEED A RAISE, NOT PRE-K

Sandra Feldman's "best and obvious solution" to the "achievement gap" between rich and poor children ("Let's get help to poor kids," Where We Stand, November 2002) is neither best nor obvious, and it is frightening in its implications. In a nutshell, she proposes that since children from poor families perform less well in school, the solution is to remove them from their families for longer periods of time. These children would be enrolled in universal prekindergarten and full-year, full-day kindergarten, at a cost of "about $2,000 a child." This is the height of arrogance, believing that these families are unsalvageable and are best replaced by institutional schooling before it's too late. Where will this end?

Would it not be better to hand over this money to the parents of these children, so that they would be better able to afford "academically enriching (summer) vacation experiences"? For a family supported by one minimum wage 40-hour-per-week job, an extra $2,000 per year would amount to a 20 percent pay raise.

--Christopher W. Ryan
Endwell, NY

ANOTHER VIEW OF EDUCAUSE

I would like to offer your readers a more complete picture of the EDUCAUSE association that appears in Christopher Hanlon's article "Redefining quality the Educause way," (Technology, October 2002).

EDUCAUSE does, in fact, maintain relationships with corporations that sell to the higher education market because bringing them to the table with teachers and the people who deliver computing services on campus is the best way to influence product development.

With respect to corporate influence on EDUCAUSE, as detailed in the association's 2002 Program Plan, available online at www.educause.edu, corporate membership accounts for 3.9 percent of total revenues. By contrast, institutional membership accounts for 22.9 percent. Of the nearly 1,900 EDUCAUSE member organizations, fewer than 10 percent are corporations.

Rather than engaging in "lobbying efforts to deregulate higher education in the United States," the EDUCAUSE policy office in Washington, D.C., provides information and advice on a broad range of legislative and regulatory issues relating to information technology for the higher education community. The Policy Initiatives Web site provides a constantly updated grid of federal policies and pending legislation likely to impact IT.

I invite Professor Hanlon and all AFT members to investigate and engage the many fronts of debate and initiative that EDUCAUSE supports.

--Peter B. DeBlois
Director of Communication Services, EDUCAUSE

The author replies: AFT members might investigate and engage a recent article published in the EDUCAUSE Review that advocates for (1) the "unbundling" of faculty themselves from the general education curriculum and (2) the "outsourcing" of course design and delivery (see Ada Demp, "The Intellectual Supermarket," EDUCAUSE Review July/August 2002; www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm02/ erm024w.asp). Here, we are told that since "stories about qualified Ph.D.s who are unlikely to find full-time or adequate employment appear almost weekly," such people should be given "entrepreneurial direction to form companies that could design and package modules for general education programs using the output of the research community." Such modules "could be sold either to institutions as a new way of outsourcing or to individuals," and indeed, "there is no reason to conceptually limit package offerings to general education."

EDUCAUSE has been making the case for privatizing and "unbundling" higher education for years, as readers may see by using the Web site. That it has done so with dues paid by many of the public institutions whose dismantling the organization advocates should not lessen our outrage; rather, it should deepen it.

--Christopher Hanlon
Charleston, IL

WHY PIT BOYS AGAINST GIRLS?

As the mother of a female student athlete on a swimming scholarship at the University of Connecticut, I read your article, "Its value proven, Title IX turns 30" (Campus Clips, October 2002) with great interest. My daughter received a scholarship because of Title IX, but the damage Title IX has done to the sport of swimming has been devastating! USA Swimming reports that every year more and more colleges are eliminating men's swimming to gain gender equity. But when Title IX was proposed 30 years ago, I am sure that those who supported what it stood for expected that women's sports would be added without men's sports being eliminated.

I was disappointed when I read the paragraph criticizing those sports that are being eliminated. Why can't everyone work together so that the maximum number of student athletes would be able to participate in an activity that they will remember and cherish the rest of their lives? Why does it have to be the boys against the girls?

--Susan Cerrito
Scotia, NY

As a member of AFT, I was disheartened to see the article extolling--with the exception of one paragraph--the "proven value" of Title IX.

The proportion of young men in our nation's colleges has been steadily declining, which, as your "Speak Out" section in the December 2000/January 2001 issue suggests, is, for many, a cause for concern. Now, for those men who do go, it is sometimes impossible even to try out for a team.

Does it seem fair that young men, born a decade after Title IX was established, should have to suffer because of the inequalities of the past?

There are some who believe there is a growing education crisis among our country's young men. This has gotten little attention. Isn't it time for the AFT to recognize the real gender inequality that exists today, and pay more attention to it?

--Mark Sherman
New Paltz, NY

CAN WE SEPARATE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS?

Social studies teacher Molly Carney argues that the SAT does not measure knowledge ("Are SAT changes a marketing gimmick?" Speak Out, October 2002). But if not, then why is a knowledge of words and math necessary for doing well? It seems to me that the SAT rewards children who have done the hard work of learning to read, write, reason and compute. And since cultural literacy in general is helpful on the SAT, the more knowledge children possess, the better they should do--evidence that the exam does, indeed, test knowledge. What I do not understand about Ms. Carney's argument, however, is that if she is "teaching skills essential to the study of history," then who is teaching her students history?

--K.J. Walters
Monroe, NY

THE RIGHT NUMBERS ON ADJUNCTS

The statistics quoted in "Portrait of the adjunct as an older man" (Off the Tower, October 2002) are so far from the reality of most community college faculty that I wonder if they were taken out of context ....

I fear that the unspoken message of this graphic is that pay for adjunct faculty is less than that for full-time faculty, which is unfair. At the risk of being politically incorrect, I believe that adjunct faculty pay per credit hour should be somewhat less than full-time pay. No, there should not be the huge gaps that we sometimes see today. But adjunct faculty aren't typically expected to spend many non-class hours in committee meetings, advising students, and doing the myriad other functions necessary to keep a department and college running. Pay for full-time faculty should reflect these additional duties.

Rather than risking pitting one group of faculty against another by making "apples to oranges" comparisons, let's join together to improve working conditions for all faculty--full time and adjunct.

--Peter Collinge
Rochester, NY

Editor's note: Our data were skewed in that chart. The correct datais here.