PressEthic

An article today in the Washington Post by columnist Richard Morin covers the growing trend in cheating among graduate school students. The interesting thing about the article, called, "Captains of Industry, Masters of Cheating" is that the graduate students surveyed who admitting to cheating of one form or another were, more often than not, candidates for an MBA. No wonder HP is racked with investigation into the ethical practices of the board! No wonder Enron happened, and other high-profile white-collar crime! These cheaters are flocking to the business world, where they use their cutting-corners technique to get ahead. Or is it the other way around?

Professor Donald L. McCabe at Rudgers University, among others, surveyed 5,331 graduate students from all disciplines to see the differences in cheating between different majors. The article states,

"They found that about a third of business graduate students acknowledged committing three or more violations in the previous year. Ten percent said they committed two, and 13 percent said they committed one."

Overall, the majority (56%) of candidates for the MBA admitted to cheating, whether it was plagarism, cheating on an exam, getting someone else to do their work for them, and so on. Only about a third of graduate students in the social sciences and humanities surveyed admitted cheating.

"these future captains of industry led the way in scholarly swindling."

What can we make of this? Are cheaters, hungry for money and success, naturally driven to business? Or is it the other way around? Is the atmosphere of business school so competitive and cheating so common that those who enter an MBA program learn that cheating is the way of life in a capitalist culture?

McCabe seems to think that it's a combination of the business culture and the students attracted to that culture:

"'On every study except one, business students come out on top,' he said. 'Their attitude seems to be 'Hey, you have to -- everybody else does it.' And business students already have developed a bottom-line mentality -- anything to get the job done, however you have to do it.'"

Is Morin (the columnist) just itching to make business students look bad? He only briefly points out that engineering students are not far behind in cheating statistics. What is behind this cheating mentality? Do we need more ethical guidelines in MBA programs? With all the scandal coming out about white-collar crime, it might pay off to have MBA students sign an ethics pledge, take a required course on business ethics, and be able to study in an environment that is not so competitive and money-hungry that it drives students to cut corners.