Student ethics in engineering: A comparison of ethics survey results from undergraduate engineering students at three different engineering programs and institutions

Abstract

The objective for this study is to compare the attitudes and practices regarding ethics of undergraduate engineering students from three different institutions, and also against those reflected by national surveys. For this study, a survey was written and delivered to undergraduate engineering students at three different institutions regarding their perception of ethics at school and in the workplace, along with specific ethical behaviors during their college careers. The survey was conducted anonymously; thus, the survey data is only available en masse for each school population polled. Results from this study found that high numbers of students, nearly 50% to over 90%, of students have done, considered and know others who have engaged in unethical behaviors, especially at school. Differences between the schools showed that students from Century College had the lowest values of unethical behaviors at school, but also had higher rates of unethical behaviors at work, likely due to a larger work experience than for the other students polled. Additionally, one specific ethical behavior with the highest percent of students admitted to was in the area of plagiarism (direct homework set copying), where students from Notre Dame and Century College both had higher rates (60% and 39%, respectively) than those from national surveys (23-27%). Overall, we found that significant differences exist between the three institutions polled, both for school and workplace ethics, and that although specific ethical behaviors between Notre Dame and Century College were in general similar to those from national surveys, there were differences noted in the areas of exam cheating and plagiarism. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.