Education cannot exist without ethics

Something has gone awry in the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). Ethics - originally defined as a pillar of the new European educational framework - have progressively disappeared from the document, and perhaps from the minds of those drafting it.

The EQF is part of a Europe-wide effort to create a common European space for higher education. The idea began in 1998 and is to be completed by 2010.

Officials have developed the EQF to compare qualifications and to foster a common education based on learning outcomes and lifelong learning, with the goal of increasing the international competitiveness of European education and enhancing the mobility of workers and learners.

When the EQF was originally proposed, ethical training was presented as a key element.

Early drafts of the EQF identified four types of professional competence: cognitive, functional, personal and ethical. Yet, as the years have passed and drafts have been amended, ethics have been progressively squeezed out of the framework.

In the article "The Great Forgotten Issue: Vindicating Ethics in the European Qualifications Framework (EQF)," published in the Journal of Business Ethics (2007), authors Manuel Guillén of the University of Valencia, Joan Fontrodona of IESE, and Alfredo Rodríguez-Sedano of the University of Navarre analyze the gradual elimination of ethics within the EQF. They review the historical development of the framework, its main elements and then argue why the European higher education system should emphasize ethics, both to professionals and to business students.

Ethics: Now You See Them, Now You Don't

European Ministers of Education officially brought the EQF to life during the Lisbon European Council of March 2000 as part of the EU's goal to "become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth, with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion." The ministers stressed that "every citizen must be equipped with the skills needed to live and work in this new information society" and that "a European framework should define the new basic skill to be provided through lifetime learning."

Out of the Lisbon meeting came a 10-year work program called "Education & Training 2010," whose goal is to strengthen education in Europe. In ensuing years, international experts from various fields have met to develop the EQF, which was officially presented at a conference in Glasgow in 2005.

Officials cite three main reasons for creating the EQF: international transparency; the possibility of international recognition of professional qualifications obtained in different countries; and student mobility. The idea is to create a meta-framework, based on professional qualifications, that encompasses and connects the national frameworks, in order to make them compatible. Building blocks of the EQF include a model centered on "learning outcomes," "competencies" and "learning levels." In the original draft, among the "competencies" described were ethical competencies "involving the possession of certain personal and professional values."

So, how could this ethical dimension just disappear from the EQF? As the document evolved, the ethical dimension was removed as a column heading and was treated more as a social dimension. The authors write, "We can conclude that ethical competence is seen as progressing from theoretical judgment to practical action, from the general to the particular ethical issues arising from a profession, and from a reactive attitude to a more proactive attitude of promoting ethical acts." In the 2006 version of the document, the latest version, the term "ethics" has disappeared complet