Higher Education in the United States

Ex Corde Ecclesiae and American Catholic Higher Education

Law, Security, and Ethics in e-business Education

Marcelline Fusilier1, and Charlie Penrod wrote, in their article titled “E-Business Curricula and Cybercrime: A Continuing Error of Omission?”, the following:

“Cybercrime is not viewed with the same ethical certainty as other types of crime such as robbery or assault (J.J. Baum. CyberEthics: The new frontier, TechTrends, Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 54-55, 2005).Incorporating cyber ethics into curricula for youth is increasingly seen as a means for prevention (J.J. Baum. CyberEthics: The new frontier,TechTrends,Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 54-55, 2005).McCrohan, Engel, and Harvey (K.F.McCrohan, K. Engel, J.W. Harvey. Influence of
awareness and training on cyber security,Journal of Internet Commerce, Vol. 9, No.1, pp. 23-41, 2010) demonstrated that it is possible to change security behaviors of Internet users through training.

In spite of this, evidence suggests that e-business degree programs in higher education include:

ethics courses in fewer than five percent of curricula (S. Davis, K. Siau, K.Dhenuvakonda.A fit-gap analysis of e-business curricula vs. industry needs,Communications of the ACM,Vol. 46, No.12, pp. 167-177, 2003 and E.Y. Li,H.J.R.Yen,C.Y.J. Cheng. A fit-gap analysis of
e-business curricula and job demand in Taiwan and the U.S.,Computers& Education,Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 969-987, 2008),
law and/or security courses in zero to 50 percent of curricula ( J. Burkey.The evolution of electronic commerce education,Journal of Education for Business,Vol. 82, No. 5, pp. 276-281, 2007), and
e-business security courses in only 54 percent of the graduate and undergraduate e-business programs ( H. Kim, Y. Han, S. Kim, M. Choi.A curriculum design for e-commerce security,Journal of Information Systems Education,Vol. 16, No.1, pp. 55-62, 2005).

A contrary finding was reported by Mechitov, Moshkovich, and Olson (A.I.Mechitov, H. Moshkovich, D.L. Olson. The master’s degrees in e-commerce: A survey study, Journal of Computer Information Systems,Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 29-34, 2002) that 70 percent of the masters of
science in electronic commerce programs sampled had security and law course(s). However that result was based on a sample of only 10 programs.In a study of 163 e-business
master’s programs, Fusilier and Penrod (M. Fusilier, C. Penrod. E-crime prevention: An investigation of the preparation of e-commerce professionals,Journal of Internet Commerce,Vol. 8, No.1-2, pp. 2-22, 2009) found law, security, and ethics courses offered in 47, 33, and 10 percent of e-business master’s programs respectively.

Two studies took a different approach to assessing curriculum content by coding e-business course syllabi (C.G.King,S.L.Frank, R.G. Platt. E-commerce courses: Overview of nature and content,Journal of Education for Business,Vol. 76, No. 6, pp. 332-337, 2001, and Z. Rezaee, K.R.Lambert,W.K. Harmon. Electronic commerce education: Analysis of existing courses, Accounting Education: An International Journal,Vol. 15, No.1, pp. 73-88, 2006). Results suggested that fewer than half of the syllabi included topics on legal issues, ethics, or privacy. Slightly over half of the syllabi included security as a topic. No previous studies were found
that reported the existence of courses on prevention of cybercrime.”

Finding the law: Higher Education in the U.S. Code

A collection of general and permanent laws relating to higher education, passed by the United States Congress, are organized by subject matter arrangements in the United States Code (U.S.C.; this label examines higher education topics), to make them easy to use (usually, organized by legal areas into Titles, Chapters and Sections). The platform provides introductory material to the U.S. Code, and cross references to case law. View the U.S. Code’s table of contents here.

Higher Education

In Legislation

Higher Education in the U.S. Code: Title 20, Chapter 64, Subchapter III

The current, permanent, in-force federal laws regulating higher education are compiled in the United States Code under Title 20, Chapter 64, Subchapter III. It constitutes “prima facie” evidence of statutes relating to Education (including higher education) of the United States. The readers can further narrow their legal research on the topic by chapter and subchapter.