Ethics of Undergraduate Students: A Study in Malaysian Public Universities

Abstract

Abstract-This paper aims to determine the ethics of undergraduate students in four aspects of moral processes; awareness, judgement, intention and behaviour. It further explores the impact of gender and academic disciplines on these four moral processes. A total of 2000 undergraduate students from six public universities in Malaysia involved in this study. Data were collected through survey consists of 14 ethical statements developed based on previous studies. Descriptive analysis (such as mean), t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were employed for the data analysis. Overall, results reveal that student's ethical level was mixed. The results also demonstrate that engineering students have low level of ethics, as compared to social science and science students. In terms of gender differences, female students appear to have higher level of ethics than their male counterparts. The findings of this study provide some educational and theoretical implications.

Academic Dishonesty in Computer and Mathematics Assignments

“…186 Results of this research indicate also that there is a statistically significant difference between the perception of female and male students as to what constitutes academically dishonest behavior. These findings are consistent with past studies indicating that female students have a higher level of ethics than their male counterparts [11], [9], [24]. On the other hand, studies by Andermanet et al [25] and Chang et al [26] found that male and female students have similar ethical perceptions and there is no significant difference between genders.…”

Student Fearlessly Attacking Teacher and Others: A Qualitative Study of Ethics on High School and Colleges Students in Bekasi City

“…Finally, this study focused mainly on the negative aspect of student's ethics and behavior, however, the study also showed that there might be a positive aspect of student's ethical behavior, we suggest that it would be worth studying possible positive contradictions of this study in the future. We agree with the study research that says: it is important for universities to prepare students with ethical knowledge, skills, and values in order to react with ethical dilemmas and capable to make ethical decision once enter in real-world of work [16]. This study also intended to provide some pieces of information for future research of students' behaviorand scholars to produce programs that make the next generation better in ethics, knowledge, skills, and lives.…”

“…The ethical culture of an education can be implemented to students by the educational systems. The study revealed that students have a high level of ethics, but it differs when a situation is beyond their control and involve their friends [16]. This study participates in the discussion of the ethical culture of education by deepening the knowledge and understanding the meaning of educational ethical virtues in educational ethical behavior, in other words, we discuss how an education ethical culture and educational ethical virtues are useful for student's ethical development.…”

Aspirational Ethics as a Contributing Factor in Engineering Students’ Ethical Awareness and Behavior

“…Thus, in teaching moral judgment and ethical reasoning, the educators of EE often place emphasis on reasoning and moral judgment, with little attention being devoted to how this will translate into ethical behavior (Balakrishnan, 2016). There are articles claiming that more than 60% of engineering students in Malaysia commit unethical behavior at least once in their duration of studies (Ahmad et al, 2017;Rodzalan & Saat, 2016), and the concern is that ethical problems continue to occur in the working environment as well. Past studies have shown a significant relationship between poor behavior during learning and unethical behavior at the workplace (Ahmad et al, 2017;Lawson, 2004).…”