It’s almost a cliché for a college to boast about how it is preparing students to be responsible citizens, to care about the world, to serve others. Whether on campus Web sites or in presidents’ speeches, the rhetoric is there.

It’s also the case that while many students are deeply engaged in service and their communities, and aspire to keep such commitments after graduation, plenty aren’t — even at institutions that boast about promoting such values. A long-term research project seeks to determine whether such values can be taught and, if so, how they are taught. Results — including an analysis of three colleges considered to be exemplars of this kind of education — are being published today in a collection of essays, Responsibility at Work: How Leading Professionals Act (or Don’t Act) Responsibly (Jossey-Bass).

Edited by Howard Gardner, an education and psychology professor at Harvard University, most of the essays focus on different professions, which along with higher education were examined through the GoodWork Project, the research arm that led to the book. The research also looks at how colleges can set people in a variety of professions on a path toward ethical conduct in their varied careers.

Read it all at Inside Higher Ed.