92 Ethics in Higher Education: Values-driven Leaders for the Future
education (Dill, 1982). The difficulty in setting out a uniform code of
ethical conduct for academics lies in dilemmas of definition: what
constitutes the academic profession and who are its members (Dill,
1982). In the professions of law and medicine written codes of conduct
guarantee the integrity of members who are engaged in private practice
and date back centuries. In contrast, scholarship is a communitarian
activity, practised in discipline-based departments, colleges or faculties
broadening out to the university as the larger community (American
Association of University Professors [AAUP], 2009). To address this
gap, national organization such as the AAUP (2009:111-112) developed
five general standards for professional conduct of the academic
profession in the United States. The standards are as follows: the
commitment to the advancement of knowledge above all subsidiary
interests; the promotion of learning in university students by appropriate
pedagogy and role modelling; loyalty to the community of scholars
including willingness to participate in university governance; a
commitment to the roles of teacher and scholar as practised foremost
within the institution; and the responsibility to balance rights and
responsibilities as private citizens with rights and responsibilities as
scholars committed to freedom of inquiry and speech and academic
freedom in the public sphere. In addition, individual institutions and
communities of scholars can develop their own codes or statements of
professional ethics. In spite of this, professional self-regulation of ethical
conduct in this context remains complex although not absent (Felicio,
1999).
6.2 Ethics in the Current Context of the University
Ethical conduct on an individual and an institutional level is
problematized by the current context of higher education in an age of
super-complexity (Barnett, 2000). The university has shifted from the