ABSTRACT
For the past four years a number of colleagues and the author, together with the assistance of well over forty consultants, have been examining the state of the teaching of ethics in American higher education. A number of reasons seem to account for this new interest in the subject: a pervasive worry about the values and behavior of students, a sense that there is a vacuum in much higher education where a consideration of ethical theory and ethical issues should exist, and a worry in just about every profession that students entering those professions are simply not prepared to grapple with the kinds of moral dilemmas they will face as practitioners. If that generalization is true, then one needs to look first at the present situation of American higher education to see what sorts of internal tensions and external pressures are creating a push to develop a code.
