A survey on engineering ethics and technological advancement among Malaysian public university students

Abstract

A survey at five public universities in the Peninsular Malaysia has been conducted to get a clearer statistics of students' understanding of engineering ethics, technological advancement and safety. Ethical issues, sometimes rampant, occur in the public and private sectors as well as in the society, these have caused poverty in the long run and to some extent the environment. The survey has been conducted over a period of almost one year with the respondents being the third and fourth year engineering and other technical equivalent students. Very significant number of participants i.e. 92.1% indicated their agreements that there exist ethical issues in the country and there are tremendous rooms for improvement. 89.0% respondents indicated that our ambitions towards a developed nation is possible if engineers and technical expertise in the government and private sectors embrace ethics awareness in their dealings. Responses of similar magnitudes also reveal that a lot of man-made accidents and disasters are avoidable i.e. if ethical awareness are put into actions.