Engineering Ethics Should Be Part of Technical Training

The headline here is very misleading. The article isn't saying that ethics isn't currently part of engineering education and should be, but rather that the way ethics is embedded in engineering education could be improved.

The actual title of the article is "We Need to Embed Ethics Into Our Engineering Courses > Adding social responsibility to technical training prepares students to protect the public good".

Specifically, the article says that current "curriculum requirements tend to be unhelpfully generic and minimally enforced" and that ethics education comes "through introductory or non-engineering coursework, where the focus is on codes of conduct and academic integrity, rather than deeper topics of social responsibility". They go on to cite some numbers: "only about 4 in 10 engineers in the United States recall receiving" ethics instruction in engineering courses and "3 in 10 report never receiving training on their public welfare responsibilities at any point in their careers".

The authors talk about how they build out tools for undergraduate engineering education for (1) embedding ethics modules in foundational courses and (2) a course dedicated to public welfare responsibilities for engineering.

I agree with the authors that embedding ethics into undergraduate education is important, but I find it surprising that so few engineers report receiving it during their education. I was in an ABET-accredited engineering program, and we had a section on ethics built into a number of courses. But maybe this only supports their point about how inconsistently it's taught or the accreditation guidelines are enforced. I do think a dedicated engineering ethics course would be helpful, though.

very sad this kind of garbage is on ieee