Untitled

and on-the-job capabilities of all its employees.
This pressure is evident at all levels, from the basic
front-line staff positions to the most senior leaders.
The recent growth in tourism education and
training is an attempt to respond to these pressures,
and to do so in a way that makes this career a
competitive option in the employment market.
While there is a clear recognition that education
and training is a lifelong learning process, a major
challenge currently facing tourism is to attract and
train the many young people required for entry
level positions. In response to this challenge, a
broad range of education and training programmes
have been established.
Technical institutions, both vocational and
technical, have formed the traditional backbone
of training for the industry. They are typically two
to three years in duration, and lead to a diploma in
various specialized areas. Examples of these
include bartending, food and beverage preparation,
hotel sales and marketing, and motel operations.
The major strength of their graduates is their
ability `to get the job done' very soon after
entering the workforce. Even so, in certain areas
�notably food preparation) a period of apprenticeship
may be required.
At the undergraduate level, the hotel school
model is the best-established approach. European
schools provided early frameworks for hospitality
education. Such programmes continue to be wellrespected.
More recently, university undergraduate
programmes that focus on education for hotel
management have emerged and have become
increasingly popular. Perhaps the most internationally
recognised programme of this type is
located at Cornell University in the United States.
Other well-regarded programmes, based on somewhat
similar models, are at the University of
Nevada at Las Vegas �USA), the University of
Guelph �Canada), the Hague Hotel School �the
Netherlands), and the University of Surrey �UK).
Their most distinguishing characteristics have been
their emphasis on preparing individuals to manage
hotel and resort properties. Their graduates have
been well received by the sector for many years. At
the same time, some believe that although these
graduates could be excellent operational managers,
they may have difficulty serving in a strategic
management role.
education 167
A general management with a tourism focus
model of programming seeks to broaden the
educational experience of students while still
providing a strong industry orientation. The
structure and content of programmes based on
this model may be characterised as follows: its core
emphasises general management education, but
also includes the liberal arts, languages and
mathematics as programme requirements. Rather
than having students concentrate on more advanced
courses in a particular functional area of
business �as in a traditional management programme),
this programme is structured to enable
students to understand tourism by taking a number
of courses related to its subsectors. In order to
obtain some of the operational knowledge and
skills provided by hotel schools, tourism programmes
frequently include a number of practical
work terms as an integral part of the learning
process.
Another model, the liberal arts with a tourism
focus, includes a broad range of programme types,
including discipline-based programmes having a
tourism component or emphasis. The recreation or
leisure studies programmes frequently include a
significant tourism component, and tend to be
multidisciplinary in nature. These and others
usually draw heavily on the social sciences �such
as geography, economics, psychology and sociology),
although they may also involve input from
such fields as physical education and computer
science. One important characteristic of these
programmes is that they generally have a more
academic, as opposed to a trade, orientation.
Further, these multidisciplinary majors are somewhat
similar to the previous model. They are
distinguished by the fact that they tend to have a
much stronger industry orientation. As a result,
they often include some management-related
courses, a greater emphasis on language training,
and increasingly, courses that relate to tourism
planning. While the liberal arts programmes are
frequently criticised as being too theoretical or not
sufficiently oriented for the needs of the industry,
they possess some very real strength. They provide
students with a much broader understanding of the
societal dimensions of tourism and its impacts. In
addition, they offer students a high degree of
flexibility in selecting courses of particular interest