Ethics Education Is Essential

Summary:
    In this post, I am going to introduce two main focuses in ethics education, and argue that they should be mandatory in college education.

Economy is now growing at the expense of over-consumption. Too many goods and services are being discarded, non-regenerated energy resources are being used, toxic substances are being released into air and water, and happiness in affluent countries is declining. One main reason of over-consumption, as illustrated in "Does Engineering Promote Over Consumption?" (The Future of Technological Civilization by Edward Woohouse), is that engineering practitioners and educators are "... unaware of the key role they are playing in steering technological society". Prof. Woodhouse thus suggest offering engineering students ethical education "... aiming at awakening students' social, cultural, ethical, and environmental responsibilities."

Lack of awareness is often because of lack of education. There is actually a number of companies, organizations and technical universities in the US that publicized some sort of codes of ethics in engineering. At RPI, there are courses like Engineering Ethics that provides future engineers guideline in dealing with the conflict between professionalism and the demands of business, but they are elective courses. In the US, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), recommends the study of ethics so that students acquire "an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility". In my opinion, ethics education should be an essential part of college education.

Understanding professional responsibility, engineering disasters are less likely to happen. A recent study conducted at the Swiss federal Institute of technology in Zurich analyzed 800 cases of structural failure in which 504 people were killed, 592 people injured, and millions of dollars of damage incurred. The top three causes of engineering failure are "insufficient knowledge", "underestimation of influence" and "ignorance, carelessness, negligence". Besides death and injuries, these disasters actually generate great amount of over-consumption by turning investment and anticipation into debris and disappointment. 

Understanding ethical responsibility, engineers' contribution will be more long-lasting and beneficial. In China, choice of bad quality in buildings is gaining awareness for ethics in engineering. After the earthquake hit Wenchuan, people started realizing that lots of their houses were cheaply built by engineers, which is one main reason why such natural disaster cause so many deaths. An engineer, as a professional, has a responsibility to their client or employer, to their profession, and of course, to the general public, to perform their duties in conscientious manner. Government definitely plays and important role in this regulation, but for engineer as a part of the society, acting within the bounds of law is not good enough. 

More generally, ethics education is better defined as character education. A number of universally sound values would call to mind when speaking of good characters: truth, honesty, and trustworthiness; respect to human life and human welfare, including those of future generations; a sense of fair play; transparency and competence. These characters, which could literally apply to any other professional field, form the basis of engineering ethics. This education is not only beneficial to the society, but also helpful for future engineers and scientists, even other non-technical majors, as individuals. When more people are able to tell right from wrong, are responsible of what they create and build, and are aware of the importance of ethics in technological society, more people will become voluntary supervisor of ethical engineering. That is the ideal state of regulation of engineering.