There was a recent study with collegiate grad students in a variety of fields: biology, history, education, economics, law, politics, religion, theology, healthcare, engineering, etc.. Now, higher education (masters and doctorate level) does not have very many values left these days. But, there is one big value that is held throughout higher education: Do Not Plagiarize!
It is commonly held throughout all of higher learning that you may not turn somebody else’s work as your own. So, if anyone should be deeply rooted in those values, it should be masters and PhD level students at Universities. Right?
This survey asked its participants: How many of you have cheated?
Across the board, over 50% admitted to cheating in their collegiate studies. That’s just the amount who admitted to it.
Guess which area was the worst of the worst in cheating, in the environment where you’re not supposed to cheat.
Biology? No. Not Criminal Justice. Nor Journalism. I would have thought Law, because they are aspiring lawyers. But, I think what happened was the law students looked at the study and they’re like, “What you mean by cheating?”
No, the group with the highest amount of admitted cheaters was Business. By the way, this survey was taken about 15 years ago. And when they followed up with the question, “Why did you cheat?”, the business majors replied, “Because that’s how you get ahead in the real world.”
Now, what has happened in the last 15 years in big business across America? We have seen Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco facing corruption charges at ridiculous levels.
I wonder where that came from!
My favorite story from Chuck Colson – an enormous Christian leader of the 20th and early 21st Centuries – was this: One of Chuck’s friends donated $3 million to Harvard Business School to start an Ethics Program. Chuck, in his very soft-spoken way, called his friend and said, “Hey man… you just wasted $3 million!”
“Why?” his friend asked.
“Because Harvard Business School can’t teach ethics.”
“No, Chuck. I’ve seen the curriculum. It’s great.”
Chuck said, “No. Harvard can’t teach ethics because they are committed to relativism. They don’t think that ethics, or right and wrong, actually exist.”
So, Chuck’s friend sent him the curriculum and Chuck points out that none of it covers ethics. It was all about compliance.
You know what’s ironic? WorldCom, Tyco and Enron and all the corporations that got busted for corruption and insider trading… they all met all the ethics compliance requirements. Every year, they had an ethics review and they sat down with a list of compliances, and they checked off the list.
They thought that by complying, they were ethical.
So, what we have seen in the last 15 years is that Harvard Business School can’t teach ethics, unless they actually believe something is true, false, right and wrong. Objective standards must exist in order for ethics to exist.
By the way, the second-highest group of masters students that admitted to cheating were in Engineering. Yeah… that’s not good. The third area? Healthcare. Put those two together – bad engineers with bad doctors – what could go wrong?
So, here are the summary points regarding worldviews:
- Everyone has a worldview. The question isn’t “Do I have a worldview?” The question is “Which one do you have? Which ideas are you embracing about reality?”
- Most people do not think “worldviewishly”.
- Every cultural expression communicates worldview ideas.
- We need to be intentional to think at the same level of worldviews.
We will address the final three summary points in the weeks to come.