Can Universities Foster a Culture of Ethics? Some Are Trying

The homepage of Pennsylvania State University’s Office of Ethics and Compliance has a clear message: “Do the right thing. Report your concerns,” it says in white letters above a crisis hotline number. Behind those words, in big, faded blue letters, is a single word: “ethics.”

Penn State has seen its share of crises with ethical implications. About a week after a years-long sex-abuse scandal seemed to be coming to close with the conviction of its former president, Graham B. Spanier, a student died in a fraternity, prompting officials to acknowledge problems with hazing, alcohol abuse, and drug use in Greek life. Last week 18 fraternity members were charged.

But Penn State, informed by its recent traumas, is also at the forefront of an effort by Big Ten universities to put ethics at the center of everything they do. Taking a cue from the business world, more large universities have created independent centralized compliance offices within the last five years. Those offices oversee compliance with regard to activities like accepting a grant, hiring vendors, storing documents, disclosing campus-crime statistics, and complying with the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX. Administrators in these offices say they are now looking for ways to go beyond simply ensuring that people follow the rules, to encourage more ethical decision-making at all levels.

“They really wanted to focus on how to create a culture where people are not only meeting legal requirements, but also people are just doing the right thing,” said Timothy Balliett, university ethics officer at Penn State, of his administration.

Penn State’s office of ethics and compliance was created in response to recommendations in the Freeh Report, an investigation into the university’s failure to confront its former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted of sexually abusing children in 2012. Mr. Balliett’s position was created soon after to focus specifically on ethics.

Since December 2013, when Mr. Balliett joined Penn State, he has conducted a campuswide survey to assess campus culture and identify problems, tried to better publicize how to report misbehavior, introduced new training, and helped the university identify six core values, including integrity, respect, and responsibility. The results of the survey were made public in 2014.

Mr. Balliett said he expected the survey to highlight concerns about underage drinking and substance abuse. Instead the most glaring problem turned out to be abusive behavior among faculty and staff members who were afraid of reporting it. Of the nearly 15,000 respondents, 58 percent said they had witnessed some type of misconduct over the past year, but only a quarter of that group said they had reported the incidents.

Staff members seemed particularly vulnerable to bullying, with 35 percent reporting “abusive or intimidating behavior that creates a hostile work environment.” Less than half reported it, and 18 percent of those who did said they’d experienced retaliation.

Mr. Balliett said the new training program spearheaded by his office — which includes mandatory annual training on compliance obligations and in-person programs on ethical expectations and the misconduct-reporting process, which he teaches — is meant to specifically respond to those issues. A second survey will be conducted in the fall of 2017, and the ethics office will turn next to student-life issues.

James F. Keenan, director of the Jesuit Institute at Boston College, organized a recent conference on university ethics, at which Mr. Balliett spoke. Mr. Keenan, author of the book University Ethics: Why Colleges Need a Culture of Ethics, said he didn’t know what to expect from the Penn State ethics officer.

“I was really astonished at how much entering into the ordinary day-to-day lives of people in secretarial positions, in a variety of different bubbles, they were doing,” Mr. Keenan said. He said ethics discussions at large universities tend to be very isolated: The athletics department might scrutinize football players’ benefits, or the development team might decide whether it can accept a certain gift, but rarely is there a universitywide standard of ethics. That’s what Penn State seems to be after, Mr. Keenan said.

Michael Bérubé, a literature professor who is chair of the University Faculty Senate’s Committee on Faculty Affairs, said Mr. Balliett has worked closely with the group to update policies that affect faculty. His proposal to update the university’s general standards for professional ethics, for example, aligned closely with guidelines set out by the American Association of University Professors.

“Any time an institution rewrites its policy in accordance with AAUP guidelines, an angel gets its wings,” Mr. Bérubé said.

Moving Beyond ‘Gotcha’

Penn State is by no means alone in its pursuit of a campuswide ethics. Compliance offices at other Big Ten universities say they have been taking on ethics too. Rutgers University’s director of ethics, John Hughes, has been trying to do more than ensure that people fill out the right forms. He hopes to introduce more ethical training and revise the university’s code of conduct.

“A lot of people viewed the ethics office in a gotcha or internal-affairs or cops type of role,” Mr. Hughes said. “We want to be seen as a resource.”

Rutgers is required by New Jersey to have an ethics officer who serves as a liaison to the State Ethics Commission. Originally the role was part of the university’s legal department, but in 2013, when Rutgers merged with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which had an independent ethics office, the university decided to go with that model.

Ohio State University created an office of university compliance and integrity in 2012 “as part of ongoing efforts by university leadership and the Board of Trustees to simplify and improve risk management and advance the university’s mission and values,” said Gates Garrity-Rokous, vice president and chief compliance officer, in an email. The office provides ethics education and training. Centralizing compliance is more efficient than leaving it up to various departments, campus officials say.

“Many of these institutions, such as Ohio State, proudly derive their values from their histories as land-grant universities,” Mr. Garrity-Rokous said. “The institutional focus provided by a centralized office assists universities in advancing these values in an era of cost constraint, rapid change, and growing regulation.”

The Indiana University system established principles of ethical conduct, as well as a central compliance office, in 2013. Marcia N. Gonzales, the chief compliance officer, said her role is to coordinate compliance efforts across the university’s colleges and departments.

“In the last five years more institutions were creating these positions,” Ms. Gonzales said. “This job didn’t exist when I was in law school.”

Reporting Lines Vary

Since ethics-and-compliance offices are young, they are structured differently at each university, and there’s no universal standard for where they fall on an organizational chart. Ms. Gonzales reports to Indiana’s vice president and general counsel, while the Penn State office reports to the board of trustees.

The compliance-office trend picked up steam in the business world after the financial crisis, when regulators ramped up their scrutiny of banks and other corporations. Technology companies like Facebook and Twitter have faced calls to appoint chief ethics officers, while the Trump Organization, the president’s conglomerate company, recently appointed an ethics adviser.

Some observers question whether such appointments really make a difference. Anna L. Hoffmann, a lecturer and postdoctoral scholar at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Information, wrote in Slate that even companies that do attempt to give heavy weight to ethics often don’t make ethical decisions, especially when they feel that doing so could hurt their bottom line. There’s also the concern that designating someone the ethics officer makes other executives feel like they don’t have to deal with issues when they arise.

“The worst possible outcome, and we have seen it play out in some companies, is the case where someone goes, Oh, we have an ethics officer, so we’ve taken care of this,” Ms. Hoffman said.

But to ethics officers, that response would mean they hadn’t done their job instilling a broader culture of ethical thinking and decision-making.

“What we’d like to see is ethics be on the forefront of everyone’s mind when they’re making decisions here at the university,” said Mr. Hughes. “When someone gets that twinge in the back of their mind, that they know to pick up the phone and call our office.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.