Hospitality Education: Potential Path Forward

Abstract

Hospitality education is under increased scrutiny as to its value for students and relevance in research driven higher education universities. Concurrently, academic institutions are examining whether hospitality is worthy of its own department or if it should be consolidated into a broader school. The hospitality four-year education degree program has been available since the mid-1920’s in the United States; nevertheless, many non-hospitality scholars have suggested the field is nothing more than a vocational exercise. While academia has argued as to its relevance, hospitality industry participants have advocated for even more resources devoted to this area as they see the need for more rigorous academic research as well as the education of next generation industry leaders. This paper will examine these arguments as well as potential resolutions. Key focus will be on building out hospitality studied academic relevance as well as the adjustment of mission and curriculum of hospitality programs in a post-pandemic environment. Rather than resisting collaboration outside hospitality academic studies leaders should embrace work with social science and business scholars. A revised curriculum justifying the value of a hospitality education both to increase employment opportunities as well as to build scholarly acceptance. Many of the findings of this paper were preliminary presented at a previous North East Business Educators conference but never published in an academic journal. More detail, history and resources have been added to augment and justify the findings.