Integrating Ethics in Higher Education

Abstract

"At this Fourth Convocation of the Godfrey Okoye University, we are challenged as a university, also through the contributions of this Inaugural Lecture to reflect on one core dimension of the raisön d’être and essence of a university. As is widely accepted, education is both a means to an end and an end in itself. It is also an economic game changer and the key to life’s many opportunities in the modern world. Permit me at this stage to ask the question: Why a University? To this question, there are many answers and they vary, like the old Latin would say: “Tot homines quot sententiae” – “As there are many people, so are there many opinions”. For Humboldt, a German philosopher and diplomat, “a university has to do with the "whole" community of scholars and students engaged in a common search for truth. For Newman, it was about teaching universal knowledge. For Robbins, an economist commissioned by the government of the time in the United Kingdom to draw up a report on the future of higher education, universities had four objectives: “instruction in skills, promotion of the general powers of the mind, advancement of learning, and transmission of a common culture and common standards of citizenship” (The Guardian, London, October 2011).What do these concepts translate to? Essentially the fact that a University is serious business which must fulfil among other services to the community, a component of being a “Knowledge and Value Provider. It stands or fails in its ability or inability to deliver on this criteria” (Ike, O/Nnoli-Edozien, N; Development is About People, Business is About Ethics; CIDJAP, 2003, p.70). According to the Magna Charta Universitatum: “The University is an autonomous institution at the heart of societies differently organised because of geography and historical heritage. It produces, examines, appraises and hands down culture by research and teaching”. "