Perception of French students in engineering about the ethics of their profession and implications for engineering education

The aims of this paper are to analyse the perception of French students in engineering about the Charter of ethics for engineers and to propose a point of view on the problem of introducing ethics into engineers' training. For this purpose the Conference of Deans of French Engineering Schools and Universities of Technology (CDEFI) did an inquiry among students in engineering in the fall of 2009. 3,589 students in engineering from 106 different schools answered. The characteristics of respondents are consistent with those of the total population of students in engineering with regard to geographical distribution, age, sex and nationality. The results show that 38% of respondents knew the Charter beforehand. Therefore, the inquiry gave 62% of students the opportunity to get to know the Charter. It is considered useful by 62% of respondents and easy to apply by 54%. The Charter is composed of four paragraphs and each paragraph includes four or five statements: the paragraph about "Engineers in society" was considered the most important for 82.1% of respondents and in this paragraph the statements regarding the impact of technology on the environment and sustainable development are clearly considered the most important. To the question "If you had had to write this charter, which would have been the first sentence?", the answers reveal an enormous diversity of terms. Nevertheless, there are some words whose frequency is significant: some more related to moral principles ("society", "social", "human", "humanistic", "respect", "responsibility") and others closer to the notions of performance and skills ("technology", "science", "scientist", "environment"). The implementation of principles expressed in the Charter of ethics is encouraged by engineering schools, through the messages included in courses, through the students' relationships with teachers and the schools' support of students' initiatives. However more progress remains to be made. With this objective in mind, recommendations are proposed to all the French engineering schools and a periodic assessment is planned.