Quality in hospitality and tourism education: government dictates versus academic praxis

Quality in hospitality and tourism education: government dictates versus academic praxis

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Quality Assurance in Education, Volume 23, Issue 4

Over the past two decades, higher education has been the subject of considerable governmental focus much of which has been predicated on concerns about quality. In many countries, this has led to sweeping changes to educational policy in what has been described as a neoliberal environment. Within this space, hospitality and tourism degree programs have been lauded for industry engagement and, at the same time, criticised for their resource hungry operations. Specific emphasis has also been placed on developing and achieving graduate outcomes that prepare graduates for the world of work. These complexities have created a variety of perspectives on what quality means both in higher education, in general, and, specifically, in higher education in the hospitality and tourism fields. This special issue of the Journal of Quality Assurance in Education seeks to unravel some of the complexities of this environment by highlighting some of the challenges faced by academics in curriculum development, delivery and assessment and to explain the impact of these on students and ergo the hospitality and tourism industries. More importantly, however, the author’s contributing to this special issue share their insights into some of the barriers that impede the achievement of quality, along with the many guises in which quality is manifest in higher education.

In the opening article, for example, Roy Wood argues that the context and perspective is critical to our understanding of quality. He describes three types of institutions that provide higher education hospitality and tourism degree programs and the different traditions that they embrace. His explanation of the evolution of hospitality higher education within public universities in the UK shows how institutions within that sector have been continually pushed by a variety of accreditation and funding bodies to demonstrate quality based on achievements in research and, more specifically, publications in highly ranked journals. This interpretation of quality places those institutions (in the UK and elsewhere) that achieved university status relatively recently at a considerable disadvantage in terms of government funding and reputational image within the global marketplace. Moreover, within this framework, the vocational orientation of the industry has been shunned and scientific elements, such as food science, have been abandoned based mainly on laboratory costs. This has a direct impact on the operational capability of graduates as well as perceptions of quality.

The establishment of processes to standardise and improve the quality of higher education within Europe was a key goal of the Bologna process that was further supported by the development of the Dublin Descriptors. Adopted in 2005, these generic statements prescribed the expectations of graduate capabilities for higher education award programs within Europe. In her article, Marina Brinkman-Staneva explains how these and other dictates have created an educational environment in The Netherlands that borders on chaotic with what appear to be the out of control demands on the hospitality curriculum and the lecturers who deliver and assess it. In that country, the providers of higher education in hospitality must conform to various top-down directives that push and pull the curriculum in many directions. Among these are the Dublin Descriptors, the Bachelor of Business Administration Standards and the Association of Dutch Hotel Management Schools framework, which together embrace no less than 19 student learning outcomes. She goes on to note that one of the overriding goals of the European system is to produce reflective practitioners for the knowledge economy. Within this context, educational institutions are technically given the freedom to design student-centred curricula and assessments but, in practice, struggle with the scale of serving so many masters. She notes the importance of situated learning but sees assessment and feedback as equally important to improve and stimulate learning. This has significant implications for those developing assessment regimes and for the design of assessments that appropriately reflect the many learning outcomes of hospitality and tourism programs-especially given that students only learn what they think is going to be assessed. She calls for a reconsideration of the implementation of the Bologna framework, a clear institutional vision, well-defined policies around the integration of multifarious learning outcomes and training and development in advanced assessment methods to support course designers and lecturers.

Marc Stierand and Laura Zizka posit that while theoretical knowledge is core to hospitality degree programs, the skills required to implement that knowledge are equally important. They also advise that students’ need to learn important norms that underpin hospitality behaviour. Referred to as savoir (knowledge or knowing), savoir-faire (skills to put knowledge into practice) and savoir-être (which includes attitude and behaviour), they see a need to include a “[…] harmonius mixture […]” of all three. Their article highlights how employees within hospitality and tourism must conform to the specific social codes expected in host/guest encounters. Their view throws up the question: Whose theory is it anyway and how does this theory or knowledge prepare graduates to work in a hospitality environment? They also discuss the importance of engaging students of different generations and backgrounds through delivery that inspires students to learn not only in today’s classroom but also later in life by preparing them for lifelong learning with a particular emphasis on the characteristics of those millennials that engage in hospitality programs in Europe.

The social environment of hospitality is also a core theme in Conrad Lashley’s article. He distinguishes between two types of hospitality-related higher education degree programs. One focuses on the study for hospitality which emphasises the operation of hospitality businesses. The other takes a sociological approach to hospitality studies by including studies into host-guest relationships, how hospitality creates bonds and trust and what it means to be a good host- which is critical in an industry where face-to-face contact with customers is required. This philosophical approach includes three hospitality contexts or domains: commercial, domestic and social, each of which is important to understand the meaning of hospitality and the human activities that inform it. Developing reflective learners is another key theme within this article, and he contends that the study of hospitality from a social science perspective encourages the development of critical thinking.

In their study, Gayle Jennings, Carl Cater, Rob Hales, Sandra Kensbock and Glen Hornby demonstrate that situated learning can also be achieved by innovating in the classroom. Their article shows that partnering with industry in classroom delivery can enhance real-world learning and engage students, while providing appropriate industry context to highlight the importance of learning outcomes. Their research illustrates how embedding key concepts, in this case, education for sustainability, can assist in developing systemic thinking and critical reflection among students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The use of real-life exercises, experiential learning situations, facilitated questioning and in-class discussions are just some of the ways that can be used to bring the curriculum to life. The subsequent development of industry reports reinforces learning and establishes the value of students’ work. Connecting with the personal interests and values of the students was also important in this study. This method of instruction was equally engaging for lecturers within the program, which highlights that this practical learning model enhances classroom experiences and can provide sense and meaning for all participants.

These lessons can also be applied in curriculum design, a practical example of which is provided by Paul Whitelaw and Jeffrey Wrathall in their article, which describes the development of an event management degree program within a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institute in Australia. Within these institutes, the Australian Qualifications Framework and the Australian Tertiary Education Standards Quality Agency (TEQSA) regulate the development of curricula with a core emphasis on the protection of students. Once again, in this article, we see the requirement for both hard and soft skills among graduates to navigate the knowledge economy. This includes emotional intelligence, self-awareness and the ability to work in teams. Importantly, however, these authors outline the competitive environment in which hospitality and tourism education programs sit, thus, underscoring the importance of getting the philosophy that drives hospitality and tourism curriculum right. While TEQSA governs hospitality and tourism programs from diploma to doctoral degrees, the main measure of quality is based on Threshold Standards which for TAFE institutes do not include submissions to the excellence in research framework developed by the Australian Research Council. As a result, these institutes are not subjugated to what Roy Wood describes as the “crudely vulgar” journal rankings that drive quality and funding in the UK and elsewhere.

Despite the emphasis placed on students within the Australian regulatory environment, students’ evaluations of teaching are not featured in the quality mix. Shelley Kinash, Vishen Naidu, Diana Knight, Madelaine-Marie Judd, Chenicheri Nair, Sara Booth, Julie Fleming, Elizabeth Santhanam, Beatrice Tucker and Marian Tulloch point to the literature which suggests that the student voice has increasing status in feedback; however, their review found that student evaluations are most frequently used as a tool for promotion and teaching award applications rather than as a quality performance indicator. They conducted a comprehensive study within seven Australian universities and found that in some cases, data were being selectively presented by managers as evidence of excellence and, in others, aspects of the evaluation data were used to present broad claims that the questions asked in these evaluations did not support. These authors recommend a shift to a survey that concentrates on key indicators of students’ levels of engagement and their learning experiences and seeks to understand how teachers have encouraged these processes. By using the student evaluation process in this way, they believe that universities will be able to improve teaching and learning based on good quality, actionable data.

Clearly, then the notion of quality within hospitality and tourism education and within higher education, more generally, is neither straightforward nor uniform. There does, however, appear to be general agreement among the authors that have contributed to this issue that the essence of quality is strongly linked to the industry context and that quality teaching includes situated, real-world learning and the manner in which that learning is assessed. Quality can also be measured by the manner in which students gain the knowledge, skills and attributes they require to be successful within industry. As a result, the neoliberal focus, noted earlier, would appear to be driven more by the potential to develop hospitality and tourism education as a pathway to foreign income earnings rather than improving quality for students or industry. Overseas student fees have been significant for many countries’ economies, and this is certainly the case in Australia where higher education is currently being fattened up for privatisation. Regrettably, however, the societal goals noted by Whitehall and Wrathall, such as driving innovation and research, producing graduates to support economic development and the preservation of civil society do not appear to feature in these aspirations.

Barry O’Mahony, Guest Editor