The concept of being a quality university is sometimes understood as referring to one which is research intensive and prepares its students well for their entry into the world of work. These two indicators are important, but cannot be the only ones. Such a conception neglects one of the main dimensions of the university's mission. Universities are a space for learning and science, and for the creation of knowledge, but they must also be a place that provides an integral training for those who attend them as students.

The impact of universities on society not only results from research or the training of excellent professionals. This impact also has to do with the ways their graduates act and think and not just with what they know or don't know how to do. Universities must respond to society by accomplishing the adequate personal and integral training of their students. And the following play a vital role in achieving this mission: the teaching culture, which regulates the relations between academic staff and students; the way in which the most controversial ethical issues are dealt with in the different subjects; and the exemplary behaviour of teaching and research staff in carrying out their duties. For all these reasons, it is of interest to ask oneself about ethics and integrity in university teaching.

The university is an institution of higher education and as such it must guide the training of future graduates towards that 'higher' level that entails reaching the specific good that society expects of each professional. At the same time, however, it also has a duty to train them so that their professional practice is based on a set of principles and values. These principles and values imply commitment to people (users and those who benefit directly from their professional practice), to the institutions, to the colleagues who make up their professional community, and to society, from an ethical perspective of an active respect for people's dignity and the recognition of solidarity and pluralism. Practising a profession is not a neutral issue. Practising a profession at the highest level of training such as that expected of universities consists not only in doing an excellent job in one's work, but also in commitment and ethics. It is the social and ethical responsibility of universities to make this possible and that of the professionals who graduate to implement it.

Universities are a space for learning values and counter-values, ways of being and behaving, and not just a place to learn the contents of the syllabus of each degree course. This function, which is inevitably performed by universities, occurs in a non-formal and informal manner and only occasionally in an explicit way, implemented intentionally by the institution and consciously by students. References to these issues are often made in the founding documents, statutes or constitutions of universities, but they tend to be dealt with in declarative terms rather than putting forward any kind of proposal. They are declarations of good intentions that, at the most, seek to provide students with a good deontological training to prepare them for their professional practice, but often ignore the relevance of the civic and ethical training of their future graduates. This is particularly important since it is precisely these graduates who will probably go on to become cultural, business, political and social leaders when they are incorporated as professionals into a society that is increasingly plural, complex and uncertain.

It is not a question of proposing the integration of subjects on ethics or of training students ethically according to a particular system of values that is more or less related to the institution in question. Rather, we are talking about training students to be ethically competent and capable of dealing satisfactorily with the socially and ethically controversial situations that characterise our diverse, hyper-complex world with its many inequalities and remarkable levels of uncertainty.

For this reason, the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Law at the Universitat de Barcelona, in collaboration with the University of Porto, which had already drawn up the declaration on scientific integrity in university research in 2016, has recently presented its declaration on ethics and integrity in university teaching. This document brings together a set of reflections and recommendations resulting from the debates of an opinion group made up of academic staff from different areas of knowledge and universities.

The document highlights some of the difficulties that universities face in order to undertake their mission adequately. It analyses their functions, their ethos and their telos, to whom and for what they should be held accountable, and the characteristic elements of what is understood by integrity in university teaching. In particular, it points out how the relational activity involved in teaching is full of situations that demand ethical learning and in which teachers play a relevant role and are a point of reference, whether they like it or not, for establishing and estimating certain values and counter-values by means of their example or through the practices and analyses that they foster.

The declaration analyses the different dimensions of integrity in university teaching: the relationship with students; the treatment of academic contents; teaching, learning and assessment scenarios; the relationship with colleagues and other members of the university community; the relationship with the university institution itself and the relationship with society. The text concludes with a set of recommendations on academic freedom and its limits, the funding mechanisms to be used by universities, university life, the promotion of effort, scientific rigour, intellectual curiosity and participation in the academic life of students, educational malpractice and the necessary promotion of a culture of accountability and of teaching and research evaluation. In short, it analyses the conditions that university teaching should meet in terms of ethics and integrity.

With this declaration, the Chair directed by María Casado at the Universitat de Barcelona is a further demonstration of her characteristic perseverance, continuity and dedication, and, since its creation twenty-five years ago, has gone on to become a reference on the subject both in Europe and worldwide.