Youthful looks on Ethics. The approach to Professional Ethics students Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Abstract

Universidad Pontificia Comillas includes a course on Professional Ethics, with atleast 3 credits, in all of its graduate programs. During the academic year 2008-2009,the teachers of these courses jointly studied the students’ approximation to Ethics.Three aspects were considered: (1) the students’ appraisal of Professional Ethics,both as a university subject and in professional life; (2) their preferences about approaches and contents of the courses of Professional Ethics; (3) the modalities of ethical reasoning more familiar to them.To that purpose, we prepared a survey that was applied to the universe of the courses’ students, with no sampling. The questionnaire was applied in the first sessions of each semester, before the beginning of the lectures. The results of the survey are presented here, ending with some conclusions in the form of profiles of approachto Professional Ethics, according to Sex and University School. These results may beof interest not only for the formative mission of the university, but also for better understanding the Ethics that the Spanish society is going to find in its young professionalsin a few years.