Higher Education and Professional Ethics

Roles and Responsibilities of Teachers

Satya Sundar Sethy, Satya Sundar Sethy

• Editorial: Routledge India
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351173780
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Pedagogía
• Categoría: Educación superior

This book discusses the significance, relevance, and usefulness of professional ethics in the context of higher education. It highlights the pivotal role of professional ethics in offering teachers a better understanding of their responsibilities, duties, rights, and institutional obligations as they work to provide quality education. The volume investigates the connection between the adoption of professional ethics by individual faculty members in higher education and the development of work cultures in higher educational institutions. It explores the requisite modifications of the Teachers' Code of Ethics in relation to the usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in teaching–learning platforms. While examining the validity, reliability, and application of professional ethics in the higher education sector, the book also illustrates the application of codes of ethics to resolve conflicting interests and commitments.

This book will be useful to scholars and researchers in higher education, the philosophy of education, applied ethics, public policy, and the social sciences.

Part I

Philosophy, education, and professional ethics

1 Academic ethics in Indian higher education in the era of markets

Selected issues

Chiranjib Sen

The present era is marked by the rise of markets, not only in India but also across the world. Indian economic policy underwent a decisive paradigm shift in 1991. This has triggered deep-seated and complex processes of change permeating every sphere of economic and social life. The functioning of many institutions has been (and is still being) modified – and higher education institutions are among them. The transformations cover not only the choices of programs, courses offered, and the nature and organization of academic work but also the objectives and ethos of the institutions. In a time of flux, many serious institutional and personal choices must be made. In this chapter, I will draw attention to three specific aspects of professional activity within an institution of higher education that have ethical dimensions. In this chapter, I use the term ‘ethics’ in a broad sense of professional ethics. These are principles of conduct governing the activities of teachers in higher education based on a morally and socially grounded conception of the appropriate role of higher education in a democratic system. In judging whether an activity is ethical, I will examine whether it is in alignment with the foundational and generally accepted aims of higher education. These aims of education (discussed in Section 3) have evolved over centuries of experience of modern universities of the West. They also reflect the vision of the people who led India towards independence. They articulated the national role to be played by higher education in India after British rule. Admittedly, there is some subjectivity in the ethical standard that I have used here. However, I believe that these principles are very widely accepted in democratic societies.

There are many areas of education where institutional and personal choices must be continually made. Here, ethical codes of behaviour (even if implicit) can be a valuable guide, particularly in times of systemic change such as the present era. The specific issues we will discuss are not new. In fact, they have been extensively debated not only in India but also throughout the world. Nonetheless, they must be faced afresh in each local context, in changing times, and as generations of teachers succeed one another. Ethical norms should have a lasting character and be based on firm professional and philosophical foundations, and on recognition of the role of education in national development. Though lasting, they are not immutable. To stay relevant, they need to adapt to changing material and social circumstances. In the process of these adaptations, the core foundations of higher education must be respected, re-examined, and reaffirmed by participants so that the teaching profession retains its meaning and legitimacy. Without a process of critical reflection and renewal, the ethical guidelines may be forgotten, ignored, or distorted under the pressure of immediate compulsions. On the other hand, if they are too rigid, they may become irrelevant. There are several types of stakeholders whose actions shape higher education (university and college administrators, government officials, regulators, politicians, and, of course, teachers). All these actors make ethical choices regarding education. In this chapter, we will examine these issues mainly from the perspective of teachers, who constitute an important category of academic stakeholders. We will discuss the following three issues:

1. (1) Professional Ethics at the Level of the Higher Education Institution: How should higher education institutions today decide on alternative aims of education? Should they aim to create ‘good citizens’, ‘enlightened broad-minded individuals’, or ‘narrow specialists’? How should they balance between these claims?
2. (2) Professional Ethics of ‘Cross-Disciplinary’ Relationships: There is often a tension found between different disciplines within an institution. Frequently (though not always), the practitioners of different disciplines are located in different departments or schools of the university. This segregation promotes an intellectual and social distance between the practitioners of different disciplines. In India, this problem is further aggravated by the highly fragmented structure of higher education. Highly specialized higher education institutions dedicated to law, engineering, management, and science are common, and they often occupy pre-eminent positions in their respective fields. Consequently, different disciplines are often housed in separate institutions. Often, one group of faculty members belonging to a discipline tends to view another group of faculty members with pervasive attitudes of disdain and snobbishness. For example, natural scientists often harbour feelings of superiority towards fellow faculty members in the humanities and the social sciences. Similar attitudes might prevail between economists and other social scientists or between physicists and computer scientists. These dissonant attitudes may exist even within a single large multidisciplinary department of a university. However, they are more marked when there is a structurally imposed segregation. Are these attitudes ethically permissible? How can we cultivate an attitude in faculties that respects other disciplines and the scholarship of faculty members?
3. (3) Professional Ethics as Practitioners of an Academic Discipline: What ethical principles should the teachers follow as representatives of their specific academic discipline within the institution? Should they adhere to rigour, or should they ‘oversimplify’ in order to become popular teachers? How should they treat the views and opinions of colleagues in their own discipline with whom they disagree? This may happen in the case of a ‘paradigm conflict’ (i.e. when colleagues have a different ideological or theoretical or methodological orientation from us).

The responses of academics to all of the above mentioned issues involve discernible patterns of professional conduct. Some of these patterns of behaviour have become entrenched through practice. They now seem to be natural to all participants and are often accepted without debate as ‘norms’. However, they are embedded in ethical attitudes and practices, which have a strong bearing on whether higher education institutions play their intended role in society. Not all stable norms practiced are necessarily good. If they are not good, they need to be modified. The attitudes and behaviour of academics can also be in flux. Today these are changing in response to compelling external circumstances and/or internal crises.¹ On both these dimensions (dysfunctional static norms as well as changing patterns of conduct), there is a need for reflection and deliberation. Teachers, as professionals, need to engage in rational discourse and make conscious choices based on the ethical principles of education.

Professional ethics in the changing context of Indian higher education

The rise of market dominance in the economy along with demographic factors has brought about a changed operating environment for higher education. Universities and colleges have had to adjust and, in the process, revisit their ways of functioning.

Indian higher education faces several difficulties and dilemmas today.² Many of these challenges are externally induced, while others arise from internal dynamics. The external challenges are varied in character, and they have demographic, social, economic, and political determinants. Demographic trends and rising economic aspirations have fuelled a rapid expansion of student intake. The number of colleges and universities has increased sharply in recent decades. On the other hand, public funding of higher education has slowed, and many established public universities and colleges are feeling the impact. Political and bureaucratic pressure is continually exerted on the institutions to play a social role that extends beyond their traditional practice of providing quality education. Universities are now expected to also enhance social integration and upward mobility of socially underprivileged and disadvantaged students. At the same time, faculty recruitment is constrained – either by cost considerations or because there is a shortfall in the entry of young professionals into academic careers. In practice, this has meant larger class sizes and greater diversity within the classroom. These trends have made the work of teachers more demanding and the maintenance of quality of education more difficult.

In this chapter, we will focus particularly on the impact of a quarter-century of Indian market liberalization on the ethics of higher education. The market era has intensified the trend toward commercialization in all sectors of the economy, including higher education. The entry of a large number of private colleges and universities, and the international opening up of the Indian education sector, have together helped in the development of a ‘higher education market’ in the country. Private institutions now compete to supply academic programs and courses for which there is a strong demand and where a high tuition fee can be charged. These trends have impacted the behaviour of academic institutions run on public funds as well. The latter are compelled to rethink their strategies with respect to funding, admissions, degree and diploma programs, and the types of courses that they offer. This has led to reallocation of scarce funds among departments and programs on economic rather than academic considerations. For example, the older Indian Institutes of Management (which for decades relied on government funding) have been weaned from government funding and today rely almost entirely on their incomes. Many public sector academic institutions are faced with attrition of faculty members who have skills that can command higher salaries in the private sector. Public institutions tend to lose faculty members to their private sector counterparts, particularly in departments that deal with professional subjects. The private colleges (with greater operational flexibility with regard to tuition fees) are able to quickly seize commercial opportunities and pay higher salaries, thereby attracting such faculty members.

Commercialization of higher education has also negatively impacted the quality of education. Small class sizes, face-to-face communication between teachers and students, and the linkage between faculty research and teaching are known to enhance the quality of teaching. However, many institutions have made a conscious economic choice to increase the ‘quantity’ of higher education (measured in terms of the numbers of students earning degrees) by compromising the quality of higher education (Sen 2013). In other words, class sizes have increased, the workload of teachers has increased, and the research time and facilities available to teachers are low. In the context created by these trends, we discuss the ethical choices that must be made in relation to the ideal aims of higher education. These choices are made at the level of the academic institution, but they influence the attitude and work of individual teachers.

Choice of the aims of higher education

Though modern higher education systems are composed of diverse teaching and research institutions, it is the universities that lie at the core of the system. Most universities are founded on lofty human ideals and have mottos that convey their uplifting mission. In Britain, the oldest and still leading universities have a history dating back more than 800 years.³ Most of the oldest universities in Europe started operating during the eleventh and twelfth centuries (e.g. Bologna, Paris). Many had ecclesiastic origins and underwent crises and reforms in their long history. It is in these ancient institutions that the goals and values of modern higher education gradually evolved over time. They assumed their modern character during the nineteenth century, and were adapted by other countries across the globe.

Though India was home to even older universities in Takshashila and Nalanda,⁴ the modern Indian universities (that were established during the latter period of British rule) have been strongly influenced by the European academic tradition and have imbibed those values. The ideals of the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates provided the foundation for the aims of education in Europe and America. These included creating good citizens, the inculcation of adherence to truth and justice, and promoting in students the values of free speech and ethical responsibility. Students would also be taught to question the society rather than being passive acceptors of the status quo. This vision of education seeks to deepen democratic participation and dialogue. In the twentieth century, these ideals were reflected in the stated objectives of modern universities to ‘stimulate critical thinking’ and to provide what Amiran (2006) calls a ‘rounded’ education.⁵ The ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt (philosopher, educationist, founder of Berlin University, and statesman) influenced later generations in Europe and the United States in shaping the modern liberal vision of the aims of education. He held that the university should integrate teaching and research because knowledge was constantly evolving. The university should not merely transmit received knowledge but also create new knowledge and serve as a repository of knowledge. University students should not be merely passive recipients of knowledge but undertake research with their teacher as a guide and learn through research. Humboldt was against overemphasis on vocational education, but he wanted all the sciences to be taught in the university. He believed that universities should provide a free and autonomous environment for scientific scholarship and teaching. His view of education not only stressed the development of the individual but also recognized the responsibility of the individual to engage in improving the world around him.⁶ Humboldt’s ideas, however, were not accepted in his own country during his lifetime, but they did strongly influence later generations of educationists as democracy deepened, particularly in America.

The intellectual and political leaders of India’s independence movement also supported a broad, open, and humanistic vision of education and the role of the university. They proposed lofty national ideals for the Indian university. They wanted these institutions to play a central role in national resurgence after the long period of colonial domination. Addressing the convocation of Allahabad University, Jawaharlal Nehru stated that the universities should be devoted to the ‘adventure of ideas’ and the ‘search for Truth’, and that they should inculcate tolerance, reason, and the desire for progress. They should eschew ‘narrow bigotry’ and ‘petty objectives’. S. Radhakrishnan held similar views and had wanted the universities to be ‘homes of intellectual adventure’ (Béteille 2000). Rabindranath Tagore founded Visva Bharati in the belief that a university should explore and construct knowledge freely and creatively. At the same time, he said that the university should be firmly grounded in the reality of India’s own life and culture. The Indian psyche, he felt, had been fragmented and alienated from its own cultural roots through the colonial experience. Tagore believed in openness to learning from the entire world. But only through rebuilding our own social rootedness would it be possible for Indians to be truly open to external knowledge – in order to receive from the world, we should also be able to give in return. To quote Tagore,

Education should be in touch with our complete life, economical, intellectual, aesthetic, social and spiritual; and our educational institutions should be the very heart of our society, connected with it by the living bonds of varied co-operations.⁷

Thus, to summarize, the aims of education that held sway during the first half of the twentieth century had the following elements – search for knowledge and truth, freedom of thought and expression, readiness to question the existing ideas and order of things, ethical values of tolerance, the commitment to progress, and connectedness to the social reality of India. These were the ideals of higher education. Indian higher education institutions have faced a number of serious challenges after the 1950s. These have been discussed extensively in the literature. In this chapter, we will not revisit those issues. Our focus will be on the issues that have intensified after 1991.

We now turn to a discussion of the experience of Indian higher education during the era of market liberalization, and the implicit and explicit redefinition of the aims of education that it is promoting. We seem to be breaking away from the old ethical definition of education. Indeed, some believe that Indian higher education is on the verge of ‘d...