If you’ve ever wondered how the business world could become so morally lax or ethically inept, look no further than the last 30 or 40 years. The seeds of the mortgage-lending debacle were sown in the 70’s and 80’s, in the nation’s leading business schools. That’s the bad news.

The good news is, today some of those same business schools are trying to turn the tide of the “need for greed” culture by expanding their morality and ethics curriculum.

Harvard professor Rakesh Khurana, author of “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands” (Princeton University Press/2007), says in the first half of the 20th century America’s business schools preached a standard of socially responsible management.  But in the last two decades the schools abandoned that prerogative to be mere agents of shareholders — pressured to make decisions based on higher returns and not a higher purpose. The result of that philosophy is being played out today with a proposed $700 billion government bailout of a failed investment system.

Now those same business schools are trying to correct the culture of the business world that brought us Enron, Tyco and the sub-prime mortgage crises. In the wake of the Enron collapse there’s been a bumper crop of ethics courses added to the business curriculum.

The nation’s number one business school, Harvard began its much heralded and mandatory Leadership and Corporate Accountability course five years ago.

Around the same time Yale University created  its Center for Faith & Culture, which offers a joint degree between the School of Management and the School of Divinity.  Yale also has a program called “Ethics and Spirituality in the Workplace.”

Wharton, the nation’s third ranked business school, offers the only doctorate in Business Ethics.

And Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School was established last year with a $50 million grant from philanthropist William P. Carey, for the express purpose of turning out business school graduates who’ll work to the corporate culture of greed to a culture favoring more socially responsible leadership.

Phillip Phan, a professor of management at the school says, “We want to make it impossible for a graduate to claim ignorance,” about ethical breakdowns.

Phan says even though the Carey School doesn’t promote any religious beliefs, he says Johns Hopkins and many of the Ivy League schools were founded on religious moral principles . The school is using that understanding to say to students “you’re not a force unto yourself. There is a higher authority here. Whether you call that God or something else is an individual decision,” Phan says. He goes on to say that “if you’re completely a-religious then you’ll have a hard time accepting that.”

Sowing the seeds of higher ethical standards takes time. Khurana says the economy won’t see the effects for a few more years when the new crop of graduates begins entering the workforce.

Hopefully it will be in time to save the business world from itself.