An Ethical Appraisal of Higher Education: Assessing Teacher-Student Friendship and Autonomy of Students in the Classroom

Abstract

We present in the paper an ethical appraisal of higher education focusing majorly on relevance and requirements of practicing democratic principles in higher education. We assess in this endeavor two ethical issues, namely teacher-student friendship, and autonomy of students in the classroom and argue for ethical infeasibility of teacher-student friendship and need for protection of autonomy of students. In connection with the latter, we argue for ethical restrictions on a teacher’s advocacy of views because advocacy of views may unjustifiably lead to maintaining one’s own position to elicit students’ agreement in a topic of academic study in humanities and social sciences.