It maybe altruistic to expect all graduates to adhere or even respect moralistic philosophy when the issues of pay and perks come into play.
Yet it this very neglect of ethics by all concerned from Main Street to Wall Street that has continued to allow negligent irresponsible acts to recur resulting in the loss in values of many investors’ funds.
To allow executives strong leverage in dictating salaries and perks based on credentials is one thing; providing opportunities for self gain without proper checks and balances to the detriment of stakeholders is simply careless and deserving.
The rate at which blue chip companies had been failing for the last fifteeen years under the management of greedy and negligent stewards surely must be embarrassing to the discerning alma maters.
The time is nigh for renowned academic institutions from where Wall Street frequently head hunts to self examine their programmes on inculcation of moral values and leadeship principles be the source Socrates or Sun Tzu.
Having rules to revoke qualifications and licences thus removing opportunities for deviant executives to repeat careless and negligent performances in new companies are insufficient today. Boards of universities should provide means to enhance and maintain long term faculty contact with former graduates in Wall Street as a way to monitor conduct.
The recurrent cycles of management failures must at least point to some oversight on the part of prestigious universities which frequently pride themselves on their graduates’ successful employments in equally renowned financial institutions.
Board of universities must realise that dispensing qualifications comes with a degree of responsibility and realisation that universities too owe an indirect duty of care to the public because any qualification conferred is a pass on which employers allow entry into companies’ realms and ultimately access to stakeholders’ funds.
It should be a norm for universities to adequately inform the public of actions taken on former graduates should their graduates’ proven guilty of irresponsible, greedy, negligent incompetences and fraudulent activities in the markets. This should only act to further strengthen the credibility of the university concerned in addition to being a reflection of the university fulfilling its social responsibility.
Making executives aware of the possibility of being named and shamed provides an excellent safeguard against temptations to enrich themselves unethically. Surely, stakeholders should always have a right to know from which tree the rotten apples came from?

http://blogs.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/11/us_financial_cr.html

http://crimesandpunishment.blogspot.com/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98435438