**3. Results and discussion**

Document search using Google Scholar provided documents for this analysis. The phrases were constructed based on the research questions and keywords and treated according to the Boolean logic generated number of documents as summarized in **Table 1**.

### **3.1 Implications of moral ethics on students' behavior management**

Moral ethics is an important issue that has driven the public concern of religious, educational, social organizations, and enterprises, and offices on the question of the standards of humanity, human interactions, and work performance. The ideals of ethical and moral man have brought many debates into the academic disciplines, public offices, and society, in general. However, the essential thinking, in a nutshell, is that every human being must demonstrate moral ethics complying with the expectations of the respective place, organization, community, profession, or society at large.


#### **Table 1.**

*Number of documents retrieved and used for the review under the Boolean logic.*

This ethical position poses the moral spheres as the focal point of the debate with questions about the moral itself, right, good, and duty [3]. The existence of the questions on what should apply as the universal ethical and moral principles, and given premises signifies a crucial case for discussion. According to Jacoby, such a debate has suited the analytical qualities around social and individual perspectives, moral principles, ethical reasoning, moral content and form, and moral action [3].

Ethics has a wide definition. Pinchera [4] and Rich [5], in their writing, referred to ethics as a set of principles accepted by a culture in terms of morals referring to specific beliefs and behaviors and how to manage them through practicing ethics. Morality is basically determined individually as it applies to oneself as being right or wrong through a systematic ethical analysis, then interpreted, judged, and applied to others. However, Pinchera reminds us that the individual is a subjective level of moral implications, which considers cultural values and norms, personal interpretation and logic, and an emotional state at the time of incidence [4]. When students make first-time moral encounters, they may establish logic based on the individualized reason of the recurring circumstances [5]. Contrarily, ethics can be based merely on personal opinions. There is always no clarity in ethical directives, which may make people, particularly students, to disagree about what is right and wrong. People consider something ethical only if it is of good value in their lives. Junaid and colleagues analyzed how ethical were the standards of engineering accredited programs and suggested more studies to come up with a global working definition, which encompasses a global definition, broader ethics, and its application [6]. They took the sample from the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Ireland, and France. They identified concepts, keywords, and terminologies from the textbooks used to teach ethics as they refer to ethics. They found out that researchers have used words, such as values, professionalism, chatters, standard codes, limits, normative, moral choice in dilemma, right decision, ethical deliberations, whistleblowing, policies, multiethnic considerations, trustfulness, trustworthiness, reliability, and social equity, at the global level. Junaid et al. became aware that some of the concepts, such as responsibility, may be too general to comprehend and may need interpretation [6]. Junaid et al.'s study focused on using verbs as a concept of ethics by concentrating on what one does rather than on what one is; because their field of study was ethics in engineering programs [6].

Students in public universities in SSA, for instance, may individually seek to accomplish their own potential by considering, recognizing, and contributing to the ethical fulfillment of others as an integral part of their own ethical fulfillment [3]. Attaining goals directed to processes in establishing such potentials is accompanied by a sense of the need for social cohesion demanding immersion into common values and practices as social beings. An individual being is encompassed by systems of moral ethics under a multicultural mix of ethical enrolled students, who must be directed to abide by bylaws and work together in value-free HLIs. In this context, a morally educated person is processed to be the output of the expectations of the university curriculum. Moral development; therefore, becomes a self-guided process in which students have to learn direction or strengthen the previously founded behaviors. One should come to learn that students may do what people perceive as right or wrong with regard to the social focus of origination of the founded behavior, which might be difficult to apply in future. Under such circumstances, exposure to a new culture if not well defined according to the mix of cultural differences, individuals may dictate the student to a different character, seemingly good or bad, depending on the cohort and collegial caliber. Though Jacoby presents the implications of the individual character's particularity as contrasted to the general culture as explained

#### *Perspective Chapter: University Entrants' Moral Ethics at Crossroads – Students' Behavioral... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109506*

by Arthur, who provides the reasons, restraints, and incentives for conducting life, there remains the question of merging the particularity with the general exhibitions without affecting the morals of one's founded exhibitions [3]. Even though the aim of this paper is not to deal with one particular aspect of ethics in academia, in the current aspect some scholars have discussed specific areas of ethics in academics and revealed the reality of the need for the continuation of diversified studies in global ethics. For instance, Kim and Uysal found that the issues of plagiarism of text among international students were influenced by their ethical judgment and cultural backgrounds [7]. In a similar case, Wilson et al. concluded the discussion on the issue of equity in social welfare policy from the lesson during the Covid-19 pandemic that it was crucial for course instructors to revisit the concept of culture and multiculturalism for ethics in education [8].

Nevertheless, for the students traveling across provinces within countries, there are phenomena affecting their thinking to micro-changes in character, particularly of the youth cohort. On the micro-ethics level, Spiel et al. [9] defined ethics as moral philosophy, concerned with the study of what constitutes a good life and, consequently, how we should live. Allied ethics look into how we can think ethically about specific issues as students move in pursuit of education across the nations, for example, as they encounter changes that demonstrate the power of learning and living new ways. Similarly, the gears of globalization with learned students have imposed many challenges to the maintenance of the traditional values and beliefs in African universities, where Western and European cultures can be learned and practiced well in almost all spheres of life because of increased inventions of information channels, such as internet, radio, social media, and mobile phone [10]. Implicitly, globalization has been noted as the agent of macro-changes in African cultures and mediated through such as media and higher education. The question of what is the right character to practice in a mix of cultural standards have been reserved in scholarly works. Jacoby argues on the objective and subjective aspects of culture [3]. According to that analysis, aspects of culture may impose students into "cultural syndromes"4 of complexity, individualism, collectivism, and tightness. It becomes entirely difficult for the post-HLIs candidate to demonstrate characters that can be accepted as universal logic. Cross contended that the roles, norms, and values do not determine social actions but the reciprocal relations which students may negotiate and construct to live social reality which must conceal individual identities such that they can no longer be defined by such social systems of norms [11]. There are peculiarities manifesting through levels of conscience for humanism and formal ethical protocols among native cultures, which candidates in HLIs cannot exhibit in preciseness or may show total change. Consequently, they may be perceived as lacking fundamental human values, such as respect, self-discipline, and humanity, in particular, circumstances for self and others [12].
