Ethics, and its application in academe and society, is a subject of tremendous importance. Ethics education and courses of study are the foundations for developing ethical public servants, educators, researchers, and leaders. Ethics, while universally recognized as important, is not universally integrated into college curricula, few colleges take a comprehensive approach to ethics and most institutions do not attempt to coordinate or integrate the ethical lessons their students may be learning. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine ethics as a course of study requirement in public administration graduate programs. The overarching research question was: "How do public administration graduate programs incorporate ethics education into their MPA and PhD programs?" This study examined four universities that are taking differing approaches to ethics education, two that used a stand-alone approach and two that embedded ethics across the curriculum. The study found that there was strong nominal support stated for the importance of ethics as a course of study requirement. The second, and perhaps most significant finding was that, despite this strong nominal support, ethics education significantly declined at the MPA level at three of the four universities studied and at all of the universities using an embedded approach to ethics education. Additionally ethics education at the PhD level was now focused solely on research ethics, and universities that previously required and/or included administrative ethics had eliminated it. The study also found that there was unclear and/or inconsistent curriculum alignment at two of the four universities studied and that there was a lack of agreement between program administrators and ethics faculty at all universities that used an embedded approach. Finally, the study found that there was a lack of a clear or consistent theoretical foundation underpinning the teaching of ethics as a course of study. There are a number of implications for future research, the foremost is determining if the apparent decline in ethics education at the MPA level, and specifically at universities using an embedded approach, is more widespread than at the three programs studied and if this situation warrants the attention of public administration educators and accreditors. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]