Business schools: "Nobody wants another Fastow."
Sure, no one wants a Fastow but are the business schools themselves to blame asks this New York Times article. Or are the people headed to business schools already so ethically challenged, and wanting to win at all costs, that it makes no difference?
Admissions officers at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, which awarded Andrew S. Fastow, the disgraced former Enron chief financial officer, a master's in business administration in 1980, are increasingly asking authors of recommendation letters to elaborate on candidates. "People's sensibilities here have been heightened about character and integrity," said Michele Rogers, director of student academic affairs at Kellogg. "Nobody wants another Fastow."
...In perhaps the most-watched screening move, Wharton engaged ADP Avert, a background-checking firm in Fort Collins, Colo., to verify the authenticity of applications submitted by a randomly chosen 10 percent of the about 800 students who accepted offers of admission this year.
...Michael R. Lissack, founder of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence, a business-ethics research organization in Naples, Fla., said, "A lot of business professors think business students are ethically challenged and there's nothing we can do about it." While plenty of schools are promoting ethics courses this fall and many have made case studies of Enron and WorldCom, Mr. Lissack said most schools were unwilling to make ethics as important to their curriculum as, say, corporate finance.