Does education influence students' moral orientation? A survey of business students at a Swedish University

Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin
Free University of Scania, Sweden
Manuela Schmidt
Kristianstad University, Sweden

University training influences students' moral orientation through selection, including the self-selection by the student's entry and exit, and through education, i.e., they are influenced by what they are taught and by the people they interact with. By applying a cross-sectional design, including first, second and third year students, we surveyed the moral orientation of 296 Swedish university students enrolled in different business programs, one being a program of accounting and auditing. We found a university effect, most strongly in selection, but also a slight education effect, whereby students in the accounting and auditing program increased significantly more in idealism compared to the other business students. We believe this indicates that the university contributes to developing the moral standards of students.
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Authors: Dr Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin (corresponding author) is Professor of Corporate Governance at Free University of Scania, Kristianstad, Sweden, and is also an Affiliate Professor of Kharkiv University of Humanities, "People's Ukrainian Academy", Ukraine. He has published in most areas of corporate governance, especially ownership and auditing. Email: svencollin@yahoo.com Manuela Schmidt is a member of the Research Platform for Collaboration for Health at Kristianstad University, Sweden. She is a PhD student in health science at Lund University, Sweden, with publications in the areas of psychiatric nursing and well-being of occupational groups. Email: manuela.schmidt@hkr.se Please cite as: Collin, S. Y. & Schmidt, M. (2020). Does education influence students' moral orientation? A survey of business students at a Swedish University. Issues in Educational Research, 30(1), 35-57. http://www.iier.org.au/iier30/collin.pdf