Ethics In The Indian Higher Education System

This paper examines the importance of ethics while imparting highest quality to education. Universities concentrate on efficiency without looking at values. Deteriorating quality in HEIs resulted in dishonest and disrespectful leaders. Ethical comportment is a function moral development, protocols, and ethics drill, which branded several challenges in ethical philosophy that should be communicated.

Keywords: Ethics, Indian, Business, Education, System

Introduction

In today’s modest globalization phase, the prominence of education and erudition developed even more momentous, given the overwhelming encounters and deficit in other facets of higher culture edification such as limited material and human assets, demands from the recipients, globalization, issues of governance and management, etc. Deteriorating quality of graduates, increasing antagonism and growing fiats for accountability by official recognition associations, councils, and funding bodies are among the factors that have “enforced” HEIs to single-mindedness on quality. While assessing the literature review for this paper, two case studies’ analysis were emphasising on need of quality assurance in world. One in Australia, a senate inquiry has shown a dramatic fall in the quality of teaching standards, student entry -level qualifications, campus conditions and quality of learning experience. The inquiry has also shown increases in problems such as student plagiarism, grade inflation and ‘soft’ marking [Smart, Sim & McMahon, 2012]. While in India & Malaysia, recently several employers complained about the quality of local universities’ graduate. The graduate were alleged to deficiency the standard talents and powerless to acclimatise and communicate meritoriously especially in English. [Chapman, 2011]

Indian Milieu

It is predicted that the commercial education market in India is about Rs. 40 billion at present. There are more than 1,550 business schools fabricating over 100,000 management graduates per annum. Universities quintessence on competence minus beholding at tenets. Among the 1,550 management schools in India most of them are focused on divulging knowledge and assistances in financial, marketing and manpower management but the equally imperative constituent of ‘character building’ to cultivate graduates is widely unkempt.

Ethics has been derived from the Greek word ‘ethos’ meaning eccentric. It is the honesty, values, rules or standards central to the demeanour of an individual or particular group. Ethical quandaries rises when one’s own ethical standards skirmish with those who have some other entity. Ethics is a branch of attitude that covenants with morality. Ethics discourses the questions on how a moral upshot can be attained in a specific situation. The unethical base in business management education is responsible for most of hitches faced in society and environment prominent to the physical and passionate pain of manhood. The prominence by the B-school education on utilitarian perceptions has stemmed in partisan priorities of the management concepts of media causing in sadism, loss of value systems and greed resulting in unethical marketing techniques, financial wasteful consumption and frustration of educationalist. There are several places where most of the aberrations in ethics, values and virtues take place, sometimes even with the connivance of the Apex bodies of Higher education. In India, these are at the regulatory bodies such as AICTE, UGC etc, Institutes of Higher educations, the society, the people and the educators. AICTE (The All India Council for Technical Education) acclaimed the accumulation of Business ethics’ determinants of the quality management in higher education are:

Academic environment as measured in number of library books, journals national and audio-video aids, computer facilities, CD’S etc. Scholarly capital leisurely as integer of faculty, books and research papers published seminars and conferences attended, etc. Physical infrastructure measured as number of classrooms and campus and hostel facilities. Industry interface measured as number of management development programs and consultancy projects fingered the number of industry interactions and professional visiting the institute etc. Placements measured as percentage of students recruited through campus recruitment, average salary offered etc.

However, there are no yardsticks for the measurements of the ethical parameters. Ethics in this context only be measured in terms of sequences being undertaken, ethical drill carried out only with dialogs, debates and discussions of values related to the insinuations of the future leaders. Awkwardly there are no clear course of action by any apex body on quantifying the equivalent. The lamentable aftermath of this hiatus is that several clandestinely owned higher education institutes play with breathes of thousands of management students.

The trend in management education is now moving to a holistic approach that not just focuses on profit maximization but has emphasis to locate business with a larger societal context with myriad stakeholder perspectives to be taken into consideration. This looks at issues like Ethics, Corporate Governance, CSR that are the emerging areas where business education has to adjust to sooner than later. Management education in India needs to focus on maintaining excellence and quality. The teaching standards have to be maintained.” The disturbing trend has been the decline in the ranking of management education.

Excellence in education is a zero-sum game. Educators’ sense threatened not only if they or their students do badly but also if other teachers and their students do well. Thus jealousy becomes institutionalized. Educators do not know how to deal with the emotional incongruity and stiffness. The density for fabricating good results may result in marginalization and omission of some students from the performance tables. This is may not be illegal and certainly decadent. A second observation concedes that some governesses like to be spectacle off and icing on the cake their own performance by debasing others. Such inappropriate reactions on the institute ethos are now serious concern of quality balance score cared while lingering strongly aware of the societal context for proper performance appraisal and evaluation in an era of financial cut-backs and the lack of a good career ladder for teachers.

Few unethical practices being shadowed by most of our higher education institutes are enumerated:

The education to enrich human life, and who ensures the quality and standard of values maintained but large Catastrophe to bring students to the anticipated ethics in values and beliefs. Universities award degrees and certificates without ensuring the related quality.

Educator’s pedagogy does not engage properly teaching methodologies. Evaluation stresses on routine remembrance. Curriculum design is done by the university and little collection of topics and subjects out of the syllabus. The accumulation or presentation of data is not enough to decide the criteria for quality education.

Does higher education cater for acquisition of proper skills? How far the university education has helped students integrate with the society?. All these questions are still burning.

Literature Review

Chen, Yen & Kristján, K (2011) sightsaw the dispute of peculiar dynamics that distresses education specifically, the problem of professional mistrustfulness among educators and its effects on philosophy. Their concentration is on educators’ emotions and distrusts in particular. Adalbjarnardo´ttir, (2010) submit a two-way movement between students’ interactive awareness and educators’ professional improvement that can encroach destructively upon this process. David Carr (2007) says teaching is an occupation where professional effectiveness that is classroom discipline is greatly enhanced by the exercise of moral and emotional dispositions that has little to do with technical skills. Ideally a good teacher is one who is a good moral role model for students. .Buzzelli and Johnston (2001) examined the relationship between authority, power, and morality in the classroom interactions. They believe that teaching itself is a moral action and teachers are the moral agents. According to The World Economic Forum Report India was ranked 8th in 2007, 12th in 2008 and this further declined in 2009, this showed the importance of quality management education.

In the last two decades, more than dozen big companies have collapsed due problems in governance. The incidence of big companies failing to inspect the misconduct is growing. A clarion call to the recent credit crisis, “The Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Tyco, Parmalat and HealthSouth, satyam saga, 2G scandal are among many businesses in the developed countries where leaders failed ethically for a variety of reasons, which may include pressures to achieve, perform and to “win at all costs”.

Approach frontward

Ethical comportment is a function moral development, protocols, and ethics drill which branded several challenges in ethical philosophy that should be taught. This embraces whether ethical philosophy has to be done which is specifically devoted to business ethics or to integrate ethics in other subjects throughout the curriculum. An ethics foundation course, integrating ethics in other subjects across the curriculum, and offering some other initiatives like hosting guest speakers, offering live learning projects, and establishing chairs in ethics in order to expose students to ethics training. The prerequisite is to recognize the significance of honesty, obeying the law, treating people with respect, stewardship and stressing the need for academics and leading by example. These necessities are to be interconnected noticeably with steadiness in hopes for veracity, ethical behaviours, and improved performance. Educators’ training should focus on the moral practice of teaching character education, citizenship, life skills and so on. However research shows there is a variation in teacher efficacy that results from variance in emotions. The ideally good teacher is a person who exhibits pedagogical forecast in dealing with students. This calculation would be based on the Aristotelian thoughtful of an intellectual meta-virtue with moral virtues including emotional virtues as its objects and arbitrating between them.

There is a great need of establishing a system of credits as a proper means of promoting the most widespread student mobility. Credits could also be acquired in higher education contexts, including lifelong learning, provided they are recognised by receiving Universities concerned. The need for integrating teacher education into the quality of education is evident in the discussion of recent years. In the report “Moving Towards a Learning society(1995)” the writers have posed a very good question: How can one hope to have a high quality of basic education, if quality is not a prime objective of teacher training? The extensive report on teachers’ needs for continuing education has shown that teachers keep up with the times and need continuing education not only for changes resulting from administrative reforms but also in order to upgrade their knowledge of their own subject. This concerns the teaching staff both in general education and in vocational education and training (Jakku-Sihvonen and Rusanen 1999). In the teachers’ opinion, continuing education is particularly meaningful when based on both theoretical and practical knowledge (Meriläinen 1999). The role of the principal in creating the working culture and atmosphere of the school is central. In developing the quality of education it is in particular the management competence of the principals that make the difference; therefore, special attention should be paid on the principals’ education.

In the qualifications of teachers in higher education institutions both scientific competency and teaching skills are emphasized. The increase in the transparency and contacts with working life in higher education institutions underline the importance of teaching skills. On the other hand, the massification of universities entails the maintenance of scientific standards, so that the institutions could continue their basic task, creating and disseminating new knowledge. The high standard of equipment in the learning environment is essential for introducing modern information technology and other necessary instruments to the students. Education institutions should be aesthetic and pleasant due to the fact that the students spend a considerable share of their time in them. The level of equipment in both vocational education institutions and the scientific departments of universities has a major influence on how the education serves working life and business life. In building school facilities in the future, more attention should be paid to the increasing amount of cooperation between education institutions and other parties. Working methods geared to activate students require new architectural solutions. The appropriateness of teaching material and the social and scientific relevance is central for the success of education. Quality of materials should be given due consideration, since it is not only inspected printed material, but also acquired through various electronic sources. Teaching material is central when children and young people from their visions of the world. Management education system is evident with dearth of high quality faculty and institutes. Greater prominence must be done on research configuration amongst Indian faculty. Teaching value schemes must be hands on whereby we have to sensitize the students and must streamline an environment of actual experience. The course prospectus needs to be planned to undertake continuous improvements wherein students would “walk the talk” based on ground realities and hard work. The main intention of teaching Ethics is to help the student to share knowledge, building skills and developing minds of the young managers of tomorrow. It clarifies the concepts of professional to avoid business misconduct thus creating high level of integrity and social awareness. It is the accountability of the educator to help craft a mesosphere of love; trust and security in the academy by understanding the student to develop their character. There is a need to design such a system where excellent quality education is a norm rather than the exception. This relates to value education in actual circumstances by proper association and swaying the student base on their total personality and examples.