In celebration of Earth Day, and in the spirit of giving more than just one day to the consideration of our planet and our impact on it, this is the first in a series of articles which I’ll post this week and into next related to sustainability in higher education.

In September 1962 Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking work, Silent Spring, documenting the negative impact of pesticides on the environment, specifically on birds.  The book received nationwide acclaim and landed on the New York Times best-seller list where it stayed for 31 weeks.  In 1962, the New York Times wrote of Carson and Silent Spring, “’She tries to scare the living daylights out of us and, in large measure, succeeds.’” The editors of Discover Magazine recently included Silent Spring among its list of the 25 greatest science books of all time.  Prior to Carson’s book, environmentalism and sustainability were lofty ideals that had very little concrete application and brought even less sense of collective urgency.  As a result of Carson’s book, however, tangible actions were taken (the banning of the harmful pesticide DDT).  Carson proved to us all that even the voice of one individual can make a difference and with her voice, given to us through her work, Silent Spring, the modern environmental movement was born. 

Through various fits and starts, the American environmental movement has continued to gain momentum.  The passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1970 was a promising step in the right direction and represented the world’s first national policy on the environment.  The NEPA met with resistance in the United States, however, but sparked a larger movement and environmentalism as a discipline and practice began to spread across the globe.  National efforts to address environmental problems including climate change became more commonplace and the United Nations established its Environment Programme in 1972 as a result of the UN Conference on the Human Environment.  In recent years, despite international criticism regarding the United States’ stance on several international environmental treaties (most notably the Kyoto Protocol) Americans are beginning to see sustainability featured more prominently in their daily lives.  Addressing what is arguably the world’s most pressing collective issue will take more than a conscious recycling effort.  We must realize that negative changes to the environment impact every aspect of our lives and must be addressed in a holistic and comprehensive fashion.  One sector of American life is taking sustainability very seriously – American higher education is leading the march toward promoting sustainability. 

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An article in last Friday’s New York Times by Laura Pappano entitled “The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s” highlights the fact that the master’s degree is now the fastest growing degree with the number awarded doubling since the 1980’s.  According to the author, nearly 2 people in 25 over the age of 25 now hold a master’s degree and that is the same proportion as the number of people who held a bachelor’s degree in 1960.

Debra W. Stewart, President of the Council of Graduate Schools, is quoted: “Several years ago, it became very clear to us that the master’s degree was moving very rapidly to become the entry degree in many professions.”  She further states that the degrees are not “generic” master’s degrees but are profession specific such as a Master’s degree in Supply Chain Management or a Master’s in Skeletal and Dental Bioarcheology.

Ms. Pappano interviews a number of individuals for their opinions as to whether or not bachelor’s degrees are being devalued or that employers are increasing qualifications.  The opinions seem to support a little of both.

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It is really hard to identify when ethics –or the lack thereof –became a social issue of the magnitude that it seems to be now.  When I received my MBA from Tulane in 1978, a course in ethics was required for everyone in the last semester of the two year program.  It was considered the capstone course of the MBA program and our professor utilized the case study format.  Later, when I passed the CPA exam, I had to take an ethics exam in order to obtain my license in the state of Maryland.  In the early years of my career, I remember the Ivan Boesky scandal on Wall Street in the 1980’s.  Boesky took down Mike Milken of Drexel Burnham and a few others.  Of course, most recently, we have seen the fallout from Enron, Bernard Madoff, and others.  But ethical lapses are not limited to businessmen.  Almost all of us can name a few politicians who strayed from the norm like Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, Governor Rod Blagojevich, President Richard Nixon, etc.  We can also name a few government employees who earned notoriety by selling their country’s secrets including Aldrich Ames and Jonathan Pollard.   Baseball fans might think about gamblers like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose or steroid users like Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, and Manny Ramirez.

I don’t know if the omnipresent nature of the media has drawn more attention to ethical lapses of our political, corporate, governmental, and sports figures or if the frequency has, as I suspect, increased.  However, a recent article in the New York Times spurred me to write this piece.  Written by Leslie Wayne, the article mentions that nearly 20 percent of this year’s graduating MBA class at the Harvard Business School have signed a voluntary student oath that pledges to “serve the greater good” and to “act responsibly and ethically.”  MBA programs have not stopped teaching ethics.  In fact, Harvard, Wharton, and Columbia have several ethics classes and Wharton and Columbia have ethics centers.  I think it is good that these students created this pledge.   However, ethics is not just business ethics.  Ethics is ethics.   Good ethics is good for business.  Good ethics should be good for all of our leaders and followers, no matter what their chosen field.

Just last month, APUS honored some 2,800 students who successfully completed their degree programs.  The ceremony was a very nice one and the excitement of the students who attended was obvious.  Fast on the heels of such exuberance, however, is the daunting task of locating jobs for those who were not already employed as many of our students are.  Across the nation, many recent college graduates are finding it increasingly difficult to find a job.

The global economic crisis is certainly no secret.  It has remained one of the most prominent headlines in American newspapers and on news programs for at least the last couple of years.  As recent college graduates are finding out, the economic crisis is having a dramatic effect on companies and entire industries in which many were hoping to find jobs after graduating.

In April, the most recent month for which data is available, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate rose from 8.5 percent to 8.9 percent, increasing the number of unemployed persons in the United States to 13.7 million.  As companies find themselves struggling to meet the financial restraints placed on them by a dwindling economy, many have announced significant layoffs in recent months.  As the New York Times reported in a January 27 article, 62,000 jobs were cut by U.S. and foreign companies on January 26 alone.  Some of the most significant layoffs occurred at Caterpillar (20,000 jobs lost), Sprint Nextel (8,000 jobs lost), and Texas Instruments (3,400 jobs lost).  Interestingly, the article predicted that the unemployment rate would peak at 8.3 percent by 2010.  Considering April’s unemployment numbers, it is easy to see that the economic downturn has taken its toll on employment and will likely continue to do so for some time.

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In 2003, Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske published the book Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods…And How Companies Create Them.  As partners at The Boston Consulting Group, Silverstein, Fiske (now the CEO of Eddie Bauer Holdings, Inc.) and others worked to research the consumer purchasing trends in the United States and overseas.  The phenomenon that they identified was the willingness of consumers to pay a premium for certain goods even in times of economic downturns.  Identified as “trading up,” the researchers also identified that consumers often “trade down” in order to afford the items for which they “trade up.”  In fact, they state that the effect of luxury brands in a market segment is to cause that category to polarize where the growth and profits move to the high and low ends of the spectrum while “companies caught in the middle struggle to succeed and survive.”  The authors provide a historical perspective that the trend to trade up has been around for centuries and that economists from Adam Smith to Thorstein Veblen to John Kenneth Galbraith have observed the trend of consumers to buy goods that cost more than what most others can afford to pay.

Silverstein and Fiske believe that the trading up phenomenon is positive and is driven by middle class consumers who are aware of the price/value ratio of what they are purchasing.  Furthermore, they state that so many middle class consumers are able to afford premium goods that the conventional wisdom of “higher price, lower volume” does not follow the trading up phenomenon.  Instead, the middle class consumers have a stronger emotional attachment with their luxury purchases than with other goods.  That emotional attachment is why they choose to ignore the mid-price product.  Silverstein and Fiske believe that the consumers have no desire to purchase a product that offers “neither a price advantage nor a functional or emotional benefit.”

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