A recent survey of employers, focusing on “executives at their companies, including owners, CEOs, presidents, C-suite level executives, and vice presidents,” conducted by our friends at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, had some interesting results. When asked about their priorities for a college education, the vast majority of these executives gave very high scores, as expected and rightly so, to these items:

• Integrative learning: The ability to apply knowledge and skills to real-world settings through internships or other hands-on experiences
• Concepts and new developments in science and technology
• Global issues and developments and their implications for the future
• Teamwork skills and the ability to collaborate with others in diverse group settings
• The ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing
• Critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills
• The ability to locate, organize, and evaluate information from multiple sources
• The ability to be innovative and think creatively

I loved reading that, because we work on all those things and more.

However, only about half of these employers felt that more emphasis should be placed on “a sense of integrity and ethics.” Half.

Some glasses just can’t be half-full.

The day before classes started I’d met with a group of new freshmen who’d read Martin Luther King’s book Strength to Love over the summer as part of our “Reading Ahead” program for new students. In a striking passage in which King is imagining what St. Paul might say if he wrote a letter to contemporary American Christians, King/“St. Paul” writes (p. 138): “But America, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It appears to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress, your mentality outdistances your morality, and your civilization outshines your culture.”

Enron anyone?

We’ve heard it all before. We can all recite the platitudes about world peace, doing good and not just doing well, caring for those less fortunate, etc. We know just what to say. And it’s so easy to be cynical, especially if the person on the other side of the desk in your job interview isn’t exactly pushing integrity and ethics. Are you supposed to be the one to bring it up?

But then I think of my colleagues in our own Brennan School of Business—faculty who truly believe that to educate business leaders is to educate them for personal and social responsibility, and to instill in them a genuine commitment to justice and fairness. They believe it, they teach it, and they infuse it across their curriculum. In truth, they inspire me. They make me believe that Dominican graduates, when they’re sitting across that desk at that interview, will indeed bring it up. They’ll fill the glass. And they do.

I think of my colleagues across all the academic disciplines who inspire students to find what they love in order to live lives they can be proud of, who understand that education is not just an exercise in getting your ticket punched. Our students become alums who come back and tell us about their lives, and when they do, you just take one look at them and you can see it: The lights are on and everybody’s home. Ethics and integrity are only platitudes when somebody else is spouting them. Otherwise, it’s simply who you are. It’s who our students become.

So here’s to full glasses, great classes, and students we’re proud of.