When Meghan Whitehouse enrolled in the new full-time M.B.A. program at the University of St. Thomas, she didn't expect her statistics class would go beyond numbers.

"It's not about crunching numbers,'' said Whitehouse, 25, of Minneapolis. "You want to balance the rights of the organization with the rights and interests of the people that will be affected by your decisions.''

She is one of about 28 first-year students enrolled in a master's of business administration program that places a heavy emphasis on personal values and ethics.

"This program's making us reflect on everything we decide and everything we create,'' Whitehouse said.

Amid the downfall of high-profile corporations such as Enron and WorldCom, colleges and universities are revisiting the basic fundamentals of ethics in course curriculums.

According to a national business survey conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics Resource Center, managers who are younger than 30 are twice as likely to feel pressure to compromise their ethical standards.

The Twin Cities' primary business schools — St. Thomas and the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota — are addressing the issue.

"We're leveraging the strengths we had in ethics in a new way,'' said Teresa Rothausen, program director for St. Thomas' M.B.A. program. "The raw material was all there, but it hadn't been pulled together in a strategic way to a large degree.''

The program integrates ethics through simulation, a teaching approach introduced this year. In one class, students can hire or fire classmates based on their decision-making performance and group participation. Students work on projects that deal with ethical issues, and they receive feedback from key business professionals, said Christopher Puto, dean of the College of Business at St. Thomas, who created the simulation program at the school.

"They take away what it's like to be in the real world of business while they're still in school,'' Puto said. "It's an attempt we have created to provide genuine relevance in their business education.''

To further emphasize the importance of ethics, St. Thomas brought a group of convicted white-collar criminals to campus in June to speak to business and law students about the consequences of unethical behavior.

Though St. Thomas has offered an evening and part-time M.B.A. program, it launched a full-time day program this fall. The Catholic university, which is emphasizing ethics in the marketing of its M.B.A. program, also is home to the Center for Ethical Business Cultures.

At the U's Carlson School of Management, professors have long worked to show how ethics plays a powerful role in decision-making, said Carlson Dean Larry Benveniste.

"I would like our students to understand that when they're leading a business or group that their objective needs to balance all of the interests of all of the constituencies of the group,'' Benveniste said.

Carlson requires students to take at least one course in business ethics to graduate. Doctoral degrees in business ethics are also offered. And a dozen faculty members have conducted research on the topic.

About 200 students are also involved in campus organizations that concentrate on business ethics and corporate, social and environmental responsibilities. Net Impact, one such group started in 1993, sponsors ethical debates and carries out simulations of case studies dealing with ethical situations.

Carlson has 235 full-time students, 1,300 part-time and 103 executive students. This year, Carlson's full-time M.B.A. program was ranked 26th in the country by U.S. News & World Report. The part-time program ranked 10th in the same report.

Norman Bowie, an endowed chair in ethics at Carlson, said business ethics traditionally has been taught in the human resources and marketing curriculum, but that is changing.

"Usually, people didn't raise any questions about finance and accounting,'' Bowie said.

Mark Hussian, a second-year M.B.A. student at Carlson, said what he's learning in the classroom is invaluable because it increases awareness.

"Not all people see these dilemmas in the same light,'' said Hussian, 31, who is president of Net Impact. "It's an eye-opener, especially for a lot of students. They may not have recognized the dilemmas at first because some things are not really obvious.''

Though ethics is engrained at both local business schools, the recent turn of events has focused attention on business schools nationwide.

Young managers are twice as likely not to report misconduct because of their short tenure on the job, said Stuart Gilman, president of the nonprofit Ethics Resource Center, which conducts research on ethics.

"There is a real failure of business schools to really take ethics seriously as a substantive part of the curriculum,'' Gilman said.

Some institutions use the excuse that teaching ethics is arcane and that it's already taught in regular courses, Gilman said.

"There is almost a dismissal of ethics as a vital part of its curriculum,'' he said. "Ethics is not common sense — it has to be made part of the common sense of the organization. You need to make ethics a legitimate part of the corporate dialogue.''

Gilman said three universities stand out for successfully integrating business ethics strategies and on-campus resources: Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.; Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.; and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Already, business schools and accrediting groups are taking action.

The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business just this year created a Ph.D. program on ethics and legal studies.

The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International, a worldwide standards program for business and accounting schools, plans to post by January a resource center for ethics education and a list serve on its Web site (www.aacsb.edu).

Worldwide, 452 universities and colleges are accredited by the association, including the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota at Duluth, Minnesota State University at Mankato and St. Cloud State University. St. Thomas is an associate member.

Kenneth Goodpaster, Koch Endowed chair in business ethics at St. Thomas, said that faculty at universities and colleges must take "ownership'' of the importance of integrity. In addition, he said, people's success should not be measured solely by income level or ranking at a Fortune 500 company but rather by their ethical agenda.

"The workplace is a school for ethics,'' said Goodpaster. "Ethics education goes on throughout one's life and it's not over at any point; it keeps going all the way to the grave.''

Paul Karon, president and chief operating officer of Benfield Inc. in Minneapolis, recently spoke to M.B.A. students at St. Thomas about integrity.

"This isn't (just) about stealing from a cash register or embezzling money, but you are going to find yourself in these gray situations in this career and there is no rule book,'' said Karon, who runs the reinsurance intermediary and risk advisory business.

M.B.A. director Rothausen's goal is to get students to look at the bigger picture when making choices.

"It's not that we're giving them their value codes but they're learning how to bring them into work and decisions,'' Rothausen said. "An ethical person in business is someone who doesn't take their life values and checks them at the door.''

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