Bridging the Gap between Hospitality Higher Education Graduates and the Market Requirements

Abstract

Hospitality higher education has basically evolved to supply the industry with competent professionals. Faculties of tourism and hotels in Egypt have tried to provide the market with candidates that match the market requirements and to enhance students by equipping them with adequate competencies that meet the market needs. Many graduates have changed their hospitality careers, others are still working in the tourism sector, sometimes in other areas than what they were specialized in. Some have found jobs that match their education, either locally, or abroad. There has always been this gap between the main three components affecting the hospitality market, represented in (a) academia, and the effectiveness of the taught material, compared to the real jobs in the market, (b) students or graduates, who may have to change their whole career, just to fit in a good job, and (c) stakeholders, fulfilling the criteria they are looking for, in quality candidates for future jobs. The objective of this paper is to explore the causes of this gap via collecting answers from both graduates of FTH in Egypt and experts of the industry. The paper is accomplished through distributing online questionnaires for: (I) graduates of various faculties of tourism and hotels in Egypt, and (II) stakeholders, via gathering responses that reflect their viewpoints of the actual quality of recent graduates. The findings of this paper are important as they represent real answers of graduates of the hospitality career who were grouped years ago on the social network, thus making sure the data collected is related to the issue of the hospitality industry and thus reaching results that help provide the industry with better qualified graduates. Key words : Hospitality graduates, gap, hospitality stakeholders, academia, quality graduates.

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