Is it ethical to accept small gifts from students? And how small is small?

Question

Is it ethical to accept small gifts from students? In past years I have one or two students have given me small gifts, generally a box of chocolates. I judge the size of gifts on my international beer scale, where things that cost less than 4 beers, (maybe 10 USD) are small token gifts. These have always fallen into the small token gift category. I have typically either left these in my office and shared with people or in bountiful years brought them into the lab or school office. This year I have received over a dozen boxes of chocolates from undergraduate students. Individually each box is still small, but in total the gifts are no longer small. All but two of the gifts were from graduating students. I realised I don't have a well defined personal policy about accepting gifts and I am not sure the university has a policy either.

What should you do when students offer you gifts?

Answer 1

In the general case, professors/lecturers/TAs should not accept gifts from students, as these things can lend themselves very easily to accusations of conflict of interest. This falls in the same general category as dating one of your students, or grading your kid's exam.

That said, I can think of three situation where gifts are acceptable.

(1) a graduating student gets you something nice after graduation (e.g., in the department where I did my PhD, it is normal for students and advisors to exchange gifts after a successful doctoral defense).

(2) a current student makes a "collective gift", e.g., a student brings a cake to class to celebrate his/her birthday and offers you a slice.

(3) you go through some major life event and students pitch in to get you something, e.g., when I came back to work after having to get major surgery, the grad students in my department got me a nice coffee machine to celebrate that I hadn't died.

Answer 2

I will disagree slightly with some of the previous answers. I come from a health-care perspective. A great deal of papers discuss the ethical/moral ramifications of accepting gifts from patients and subordinates and students/trainees. I will say up-front that I believe accepting valuable gifts from students is a problem and should be avoided in the vast majority of circumstances. In contrast, I do not ALWAYS see a problem with accepting small gifts from students/patients. Offering a gift is typically a way to express some appreciation and accepting the gift is a way to express your appreciation of the appreciation. Rejecting the gift can be slightly insulting and harm student-teacher rapport. Coming off in a stand-offish way to one student can have long-lasting implications.

I had two experiences where a student offered me a small basket of cookies and another offered a decoration with a value of 10$. I kindly told them no thank you, but they insisted. I insisted no thank you again, and they re-insisted. I know if I said no once again, she would have been insulted. It alienates the student and puts me in an awkward position of being an authoritarian person who cannot participate in typical activities (i.e., doing/accepting small favours). A teacher is not a friend, and that should be clear, but a teacher can still be warm, and approachable.

In essence, the benefits of accepting a gift (e.g., increasing approachability, seeming nice/human) can often outweigh the potential costs (which are often negligible if the gift is of nominal value). This is, of course, on a case by case basis. It might be appropriate in some contexts (e.g., very small class, clinical supervision) but not others (e.g., very large class). As is often the case, judgment is needed.

Answer 3

I have students bringing me gifts quite often. Like Stephan Kolassa, I am quite uncomfortable with it. I am made even more uncomfortable by the fact that in the local culture (not my native culture) it is common for subordinates to bring gifts to their boss, which seems to me like a continued corruption to keep ones job.

As should be obvious to anyone in a position in power, people subject to that power think it is great to be able to buy preferential treatment. Some of my students get chauffered to school in very expensive cars (>$100,000) so I am sure they have the money to give as expensive of a gift as they feel.

However, as the one in power, I must keep this tendency in check. I, therefore, simply do not accept gifts from individual students. Period. I do, however, accept gifts if they are from the entire class and presented by the "leader of the class" which all classes here have.

There are limits on what I would accept from the class but that has never been in question. The biggest gift I've received would set each student back $1. And to be clear, I would never accept cash or something very similar to cash.

Answer 4

One of the circumstances when I see no problem in accepting a gift is when the gift has no monetary value.

I was offered once a polystyrene toroidal earth at the end of a geometry class, whose cost was only a little time and effort. I accepted it as a token of gratitude and see no problem with that. I was sort of a TA, and I was not grading the students (not that it would have affected my grading, but still an important note). It sits in my office from then, and reminds me that teaching well can be well-appreciated.

Answer 5

I'm surprised that so far noone mentioned that the acceptable ethics are possibly spelled out as legally binding rules.

Giving something to a university teacher is totally unusual here (Germany). It is less unusul that a school class (or the parents) gives something to a teacher they had for years when the teacher will not teach the class any longer. But this is actually a situation where the legal rules can be more strict than what many people would intuitively consider OK (see also this poll.)
Which is why I mention this here.

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E.g. I live in Thuringia, Germany. Rules for employees of the state of Thuringia are in general are that anything above 25 EUR always needs explicit permission. And anything that is close to money is always inacceptable (including e.g. entrance tickets, gift cards/vouchers). Rules can be more strict for certain types of employees, e.g. School teachers in Thuringia need to obtain permission for anything with the exception of gifts that are of idealistic (?) value only.

Anti-corruption rules are something that every employee has to sign. Also, the TVL trade agreement I signed with my work contract states as "default value" that I'm not allowed to accept anything that is related to my work without permission. However, "automatic permissions" can be granted for small things. (e.g. the 25 € in the paragraph above).

Some universities (in other states) have spelled out lists of what they consider so small that the permission is granted automatically such as: "collective" flowers from your colleagues for birthday, or the evaluation copy of a book that you review, pen with an advertisement on it.

Answer 6

Fortunately for everyone involved, I am not a professor. I would be very uncomfortable even with "small" gifts (what's small for a professor with a salary could make quite a dent in some students' budgets).

There is a slippery slope involved here, and I personally would rather avoid even having to think about this by laying down extremely simple rules. For instance, I kind of like this:

If I see you out on the town or at a sports bar, and you want to buy me a drink, you cannot currently be in my classes or ever take any of my classes again. Then probably you can buy me a drink.

I'd probably suggest that if anyone does want to express their appreciation of something I did, an email would be quite enough and would of course be very welcome. If someone does feel the compulsion to spend money, they could always donate to their favorite charity.

Answer 7

I occasionally give small gifts or presents¹ to the students in my upper division classes---things like the specialized pads that are common in my field but the students are not familiar with (they cost a few dollars each and the students are unlikely to buy the without having tried them).

So rather than the beer scale, I use my donations to the class as a measure: if I could not afford to give something of similar value to every student in the presenter's class then it represents a problem.

None-the-less I am still a little uncomfortable with anything coming from a single student or small group of students. What is true for Ceasar's wife is still more true for Ceasar.

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¹ Here I make a distinction between "gift" and "present" that I read somewhere. A gift is something you give because you think the recipient will get enjoyment out of it but would not buy it for themselves. A present is something you give them because you think they should have it.

Answer 8

I think it's ethical, but I work hard never to accept gifts from students, past or present.

Present students

The reason not to accept gifts from present students is multifaceted:

• It sets up the possibility of a conflict of interest. I want to be as objective as possible in evaluating students and structuring my courses.
• It might signal to other students that they should consider giving gifts as well.

Past students

I don't accept gifts from past students as well because even past students still have professional connections with faculty:

• I get often recommendation/reference requests about past students. I have had at least one case where a weak student gave a gift in my name and then asked me for a recommendation letter for a job.
• There are reasonable and more appropriate ways for students to demonstrate support for their alma maters (e.g. making a donation to the school/college/department).
• It might set up the expectation among students that they should give me gifts.