A “Professional Issues and Ethics in Mathematics” course

Some courses achieve existence, some have existence thrust upon them. It is normally a struggle to create a course on the ethical or social aspects of science or mathematics. This is the story of one that was forced to exist by an unusual confluence of outside circumstances. In the mid 1990s the University of New South Wales instituted a its undergraduates should undertake a course in “Professional Issues appropriate to their major. The academic community by and large regarding it as an attempt to substitute politically correct hot air. But University policy is decided by a Council dominated by parliamentarians, people and other outside interests who believed the concentration education on technical content was not preparing students for rumoured too that the University feared being sued in the future losses through unethical behaviour of graduates, graduates who court, “But the university never trained me to behave ethically”…..