Tourism and Hospitality Postgraduate Research Experience

Abstract

This paper explores the problems and constraints that encounter postgraduates, their perceptions and whether they consider their research experience to be satisfying and rewarding. The research population was all postgraduates who have completed either a Master's or a PhD in tourism and hotel faculties in the Egyptian universities prior to September 2002. The questionnaire used an agree-disagree scale and focused on the following dimensions: supervision, intellectual atmosphere, skills development, thesis examination process, clarity of goals and expectations, and overall satisfaction. Respondents were satisfied with their experience regarding “skills development” and “thesis examination process,” where the agreement percentage constituted 84.66% and 79.48%, respectively. Dissatisfaction was expressed for “intellectual atmosphere” and “infrastructure.” The agreement percentage for the “overall satisfaction” was 57.19%. Results proved that the postgraduate research experience satisfaction (PRES) is closely correlated to supervision, intellectual atmosphere, skills development, thesis examination process, and clarity of goals and expectations. Moreover, the overall satisfaction of respondents is closely correlated with all sub-scales (r above 0.95), which confirms the importance of all sub-scales in achieving the overall satisfaction among graduates.