Professional Ethics and Employability: Problems Expressed by University Teachers in Mexico and Spain

Abstract

The article provides some theoretical and empirical elements of professional ethics and employability from the Research Project about Professional Ethics developed in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). We introduce three types of mediations that influence the ethical behavior of professionals in their workplace and discuss the empirical information from the answers to two questions from an open ended interview guide applied to forty graduate program coordinators in UNAM and to fourteen professors from three universities in Valencia in Spain: the University of Valencia, the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Catholic University of Valencia “Saint Vincent Martyr”. The two questions asked are: What are the ethical dilemmas that graduate students face in their professional practice? What are the challenges that society is demanding from the university in relation to teaching professionals in your field of knowledge?