We examined differences in professors' and students' perceptions of the ethicalness of faculty behavior. The sample of 115 professors and 157 undergraduates responded to 16 items regarding faculty behavior. Faculty and students differed significantly on 4 of the 16 behaviors and showed a strong trend on another 3. Faculty saw ensuring popularity with an easy test, accepting a textbook rebate, and using profanity as more unethical than did the undergraduates. The students viewed failing to update notes as more unethical than did the faculty. We argue that future research should explore students' views on the distinction between professors' undesirable and unethical behaviors.

Many educators and social commentators have explored ethical issues in higher education (e.g., Alexander, 1986; Finn, 1989; Robinson & Moulton, 1985; Thompson, 1991; Wilshire, 1990). Professional associations, such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP, 1987) and the American Psychological Association (APA, 1992) have issued responsibility standards that apply to their general membership and special considerations that cover the unique situations that confront their academic professionals. Despite the fact that scholars have noted that teaching is rife with ethical dilemmas that require a “conscious reflection on values” (e.g., Svinicki, 1994, p. 277), there is relatively little empirical research on ethical issues in academia (Tabachnick, Keith-Spiegel, & Pope, 1991). Research on faculty behavior has focused on “hot topics” such as sexual harassment and largely ignored the more daily ethical dilemmas involved in teaching and instructor-student interactions. In particular, there is sparse research on students' perceptions of faculty behavior.

Tabachnick, Keith-Spiegel, and Pope (1991) conducted a survey of ethical problems in higher education utilizing a 63-item questionnaire that asked faculty to identify and rank potential ethical issues. Although their study was limited to academic psychologists, research on ethical issues involved in teaching per se suggests that many of the themes are generalizable across disciplines (Keith-Spiegel, Wittig, Perkins, Balogh, & Whitley, 1993). In a related follow-up, Keith-Spiegel, Tabachnick, and Allen (1993) culled 51 items from their original work and explored students' views of professors' actions. Unfortunately, due to differences in the response scales used, they could not make direct statistical comparisons between students and faculty. However, they did find indications that faculty and students were similar on most of the items.

The present study compared faculty and student perceptions of faculty behavior using items from Tabachnick, Keith-Spiegel, and Pope's (1901) work. We expected that agreement would be high for faculty and students.

Procedure

We sampled faculty (N = 115) and undergraduates (N = 157) at a medium-sized public Midwestern university. We mailed questionnaires to a randomly selected sample of 234 faculty members (representing half the faculty). The 115 responses represented a response rate of 49%. The students were enrolled in a general education introductory psychology course and received course credit for their participation. To insure that the students had reasonable familiarity with university life, they must have completed at least two semesters of college in order to participate in the study.

Respondents rated the ethicalness of 16 faculty behaviors on a 5-point scale that ranged from 1 (unquestionably not ethical) to 5 (unquestionably ethical). We selected the items from a larger list of issues developed by Tabachnick, Keith-Spiegel, and Pope (1991) and we focused primarily on student-teacher relationships and professional ethical issues for college teachers. We chose items that appeared to be appropriate across all disciplines.

Sample Characteristics

Faculty. Of the 115 faculty respondents, 62% were men and 38% were women. The median age was 47 and the age range was 28–63. The sample was predominantly European-American (96%). The majority of the faculty was from a college of liberal arts (62%), 12% were from the college of business, and an additional 25% were from colleges of science, and health/physical education. Respondents indicated that, on average, they spent 81% of their workload on teaching related activities. In general, despite a higher percentage of female faculty, the sample approximated the demographics of the faculty pool.

Students. Of the 157 student respondents, 94 were women (60%) and 63 were men (40%). The median age was 19 and the age range was 18–28. The sample was predominantly European-American (92%). Seventy percent of the sample was sophomores and the remaining 30% were juniors or seniors. The students represented a cross-section of majors.

To adjust for the use of multiple tests, we considered differences significant if they achieved the probability level of .003 or better. In contrast to the expectation of high agreement between faculty and students, we found significant differences on 4 of the 16 behaviors and a strong trend in another 3 behaviors. Although both faculty and students viewed most of the behaviors as unethical, there were differences detected in the degree of perceived ethicalness.

Table 1 shows the mean score on each behavior for the faculty and student samples. Faculty saw ensuring popularity with easy tests (*[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = −5.04, *[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] < .001), accepting a textbook rebate (*[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = −5.14, *[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] < .001), and using profanity in lectures (*[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = −6.68, *[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] < .001) as more unethical than did the student sample. Additionally, there was a strong trend for faculty to see sexual involvement with a student as more unethical than did the students (*[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = −2.91, *[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = .004). Students saw the use of old lecture notes *[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = 3.66, *[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] < .001) as more unethical than did faculty, and had a strong trend toward viewing the breaking of confidence (*[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = 2.85,*[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = .005) and the teaching of unmastered material (*[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = 2.89, *[This character cannot be represented in ASCII text] = .004) as more unethical than did the faculty.

Overall, we detected more differences between students and faculty than previous research would suggest (Keith-Spiegel, Tabachnick, & Allen, 1993). However, the findings are logical when we consider the daily context of both students and faculty. For instance, students' understandable self-interest is evident in their concern over course issues such as outdated lecture notes. On the other hand, faculty are more aware of factors (such as emergency hires) that refocus the moral principles that may underlie “unwanted” behaviors such as “teaching material you haven't really mastered.” Students appear less perturbed by some of the “political” issues in academia such as allowing likability to influence grading, giving easy tests for popularity sake, or sexual relations between faculty and students. However, although there was a difference of degree, both faculty and students viewed most of the behaviors as unethical. For instance, both faculty and students ignoring evidence of cheating and insulting a student in his/her absence as strongly unethical.

Recently, researchers have examined students' “pet peeves” regarding faculty behavior (Murray, 2000). Appleby (1990) and Perlman and McCann (1998) have tapped students' views of undesirable faculty behaviors. The lists include behaviors such as poor organization, intellectual arrogance, poor testing, and keeping students past the end of class. When contrasting the work on ethics in education with the work on pet peeves, we believe that it is important to conduct further empirical research into students' motivation and ability to distinguish between undesirable behaviors and unethical behaviors. We need to explore whether students discern the underlying moral principle at hand when considering their concerns regarding professors' behaviors. In focus group work with students in this area (Morgan, Korschgen, & Gardner, 1996), we detected few arguments that centered on classic moral reasoning (e.g., Rest, 1986). Future research on this topic may be well served by using senior students due to their increased experience with college situations. In a practical sense, we believe that professors should know if students perceive a behavior as more than just a “pet peeve.” We see judgments of morality to carry a more severe implication than those regarding unwanted behaviors. Professors' attention to students concerns (undesirable or unethical) should improve the quality of the classroom interaction and, consequently, student learning.

We thank Kristin Bever and Joseph Monroe for their help with the data collection.

Legend for Chart:

A - Faculty Sample: (N = 115): M
B - Faculty Sample: (N = 115): SD
C - Student Sample: (N = 157): M
D - Student Sample: (N = 157): SD

                                     A                         B
                                     C                         D

Behaviors that faculty viewed as more unethical

1. Giving easy courses or tests to ensure your
   popularity with students.

                                  1.33                       .81
                               1.85[1]                       .89

2. Accepting for yourself a publisher's monetary
   rebate for adopting their text.

                                  1.57                      1.01
                               2.24[1]                      1.14

3. Using profanity in lectures.

                                  2.29                      1.13
                               3.25[1]                      1.20

4. Becoming sexually involved with a student.[b]

                                  1.41                       .78
                                  1.72                       .98
Behaviors that students viewed as more unethical

5. Failing to update lecture notes when
   re-teaching a course.

                                  2.58                      1.11
                               2.10[1]                      1.02

6. Telling colleagues a confidential disclosure
   told to you by a student.[b]

                                  1.56                       .72
                               1.32[1]                       .62

7. Teaching material you haven't
   really mastered.[b]

                                  2.62                      1.04
                               2.26[1]                      1.01

Behaviors that did not yield significant differences

8. Ignoring strong evidence of cheating.

                                  1.20                       .55
                                  1.39                       .79

9. Teaching full time while
   “moonlighting” at least 20
   hours per week.

                                  2.66                      1.24
                                  2.94                      1.09

10. Selling unwanted complimentary textbooks
    to used book vendors.

                                  2.46                      1.31
                                  2.48                      1.19

11. Allowing students to drop courses for
    reasons not officially approved.

                                  2.56                      1.06
                                  2.79                      1.19

12. Omitting significant information when writing
    a letter of recommendation for a student.

                                  2.11                       .88
                                  2.00                       .98

13. Insulting, ridiculing, etc. a student in
    his or her absence.
                                  1.36                       .68
                                  1.35                       .74

14. Ignoring unethical behavior by colleagues.

                                  1.93                       .88
                                  1.77                       .82

15. Allowing a student's “likability”
    to influence your grading.

                                  1.51                       .79
                                  1.77                      1.03

16. Grading on a strict curve regardless of
    class performance level.

                                  2.42                      1.25
                                  2.13                      1.05

a from Tabachnick et al. (1991).

b Evidence of a strong trend (p. <.005)

1 Adjusting for multiple t tests, differences considered significant at the p. <.003 level.

Note: Ratings are on a 1–5 Likert-type scale. The lower the number the more unethical the behavior.

Note: Items administered in the followed order: 8, 1, 9, 10, 2, 11, 12, 5, 6, 13, 3, 4, 7, 14, 15, 16.

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By Betsy Levonian Morgan, University of Wisconsin—La Crosse and Ann J. Korschgen, University of Wisconsin—La Crosse

Send correspondence regarding this manuscript to Betsy Morgan, Psychology Department, 1725 State Street, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, WI 54601. e-mail: morgan.bets@uwlax.edu.