The Quandary Facing Contemporary Higher Education: Moral Education in Postmodern Universities

At the end of her book on the marginalization of moral education within universities from the eighteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, Julie Reuben summarized a dilemma.3 Modern universities, she observed, never abandoned their traditional moral aims. Despite moral pluralism, they continue to claim that they “should prepare their students to live ‘properly’ and contribute to the betterment of society.”4 The problem, she argued, is that they “no longer have a basis from which to judge moral claims.”5