This article aims to explore the moral ideas and experiences that students at Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS) have of being a professional with an ‘ethical compass.’ Semi-structured interviews were held with 36 fourth-year Bachelor students divided over four institutions and three different programmes: Initial Teacher Education, Business Services and Information and Communication Technology. Findings show that students say they strive to be(come) moral professionals, but that they have difficulties recognising and articulating the moral aspects of their professional roles. They seem to lack a moral vocabulary and the moral knowledge to verbalise their aspirations and to provide arguments to explicate or legitimise their moral behaviour. While most students were critical of the support they received from their universities, they indicated that various other role models and (work) experiences did have a strong and positive influence on their moral development. In this article, we reflect on the findings in relation to international empirical research on students’ moral development and highlight the characteristics of UAS students.

本文旨在探讨荷兰应用科学大学（UAS）的学生要成为具有“道德指南针”专业的道德观念和经验。对36个四年级的学士学位学生进行了半结构化访谈，这些学生分布在四个机构和三个不同的计划中：初始教师教育，商业服务以及信息和通信技术。调查结果表明，学生说他们努力成为道德专业人士，但是他们在认识和表达其职业角色的道德方面有困难。他们似乎缺乏道德词汇和道德知识，无法表达自己的愿望并提供论点以阐明或使自己的道德行为合法化。虽然大多数学生都对自己大学的支持持批评态度，他们指出，其他各种榜样和（工作）经历确实对他们的道德发展产生了强大而积极的影响。在本文中，我们将反思有关学生道德发展的国际实证研究的发现，并强调UAS学生的特点。