On The Development Of British Tourism Higher Education

Tourism has become the largest industry in the world, exhibiting its great development potential as time goes by. With its fast development, tourism has not only become the pillar industry of local economic development, but also influenced the local society, culture and environment, which shows that tourism is a complex activity, completely dependent on tourism talent. Tourism talent is the key to the development and success of tourism industry. It is the well-trained tourism talent with professional expertise and knowledge that owns the competitive edge, more tourists and better economic, social and environment effect. Therefore, it is self-evident that tourism education is significant to the sustainable development of tourism industry and it deserves serious study.Founded in1893, the Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne was the first hotel management school in the world offering high-level studies to students who are aiming for careers in the hotel industry. With a history of over100years, tourism education in western countries, especially in Europe and America, has accumulated plenty of experiences. Britain is an economic power and the origin of modern tourism in the world. Drawing on its highly developed economy, high quality education and government support, British tourism higher education ranks the foremost in the world both in practice and theory, and thus is the example for other countries.Britain is also one of the most developed countries both in tourism industry and higher education. Over hundreds of years of development, the quality of British higher education enjoys a very high prestige. Beginning about more than40years ago, British tourism higher education came into being as a result of the fast development of tourism industry and not without problems. However, it is undeniable that it has played an important role in meeting the industry need, providing diversified and high quality tourism education as well as making contributions to the economy.In the twenty-first century, new changes have taken places across the world, including the deepening of economic globalization and global competition, more concern about ecological and environmental issues such as climate change, and the continued fast pace of information and communication technology. We are looking at a mature market and a mature supply in which global forces are the main driving forces. Accordingly, like all the other sectors in global economy, the tourism industry is experiencing seismic changes and the future is rather harder to predict. How will British tourism higher education survive this always changing world? Does it have any new features, major problems at the present and challenges or opportunities in the future? In the era of knowledge economy knowledge plays an increasingly important role, and knowledge on diversity will become a competitive advantage, so what kind of expertise will the future tourism graduates possess? Theses are all aspects that cannot be neglected in the future development of tourism higher education. Consequently, the research on British tourism higher education has both theoretical and practical significance, contributing to the construction of more reasonable tourism higher education theories and solution of practical tourism higher education problems.However, it is really a pity that there hasn't been such a systematic academic monograph in China or abroad. And there are much less research papers in this field. In particular, no one has made a comprehensive and systematic study on the development, curriculum and quality assurance of British tourism higher education in China. Based on the various original resources this dissertation gives a relatively comprehensive and systematic analysis in these aspects by reading and analyzing relevant literature.The framework of the dissertation consists of Introduction, Body and Conclusion. The main contents are as follows:Introduction gives a general overview of the background, status, significance, method and clue of this research. After the research background and the general research status in China and abroad, it illustrates its theoretical significance of enriching and complimenting contemporary tourism higher education theories and practical significance of facilitating solving practical tourism higher education problems, and then points out its interdisciplinary perspective and literature analysis and other research methods. Furthermore, it outlines the research clue from the origin and development, to the present status and then to the problems and tendency of British tourism higher education.The Body of the dissertation falls into five chapters:Chapter One provides some relevant definitions and analyzes the course of development of British tourism higher education, revealing its unique process of surviving in an always changing society. Firstly, it defines tourism higher education and its related aspects, including the definition, characteristics and classification of tourism education; the definition, characteristics and significance of higher tourism education. Secondly, it discusses the origin and development of British tourism higher education in three stages:industrial stage, fragmented stage and benchmark stage. The Industrial Stage is from1960s to1970s. The tourism programs of this period were highly vocational in aim and content. The Fragmented Stage is from1980s to1990s, which can be again grouped into two periods:turbulence (1980s-early1990s) and unease (mid to late1990s). The expansion of number of institutions, tourism courses and students in the early period led to the oversupply in the later period. This was a period dominated by debates and uncertainty about the content of the curriculum and accompanying fragmentation. The third stage is referred to as the Benchmark Stage, which takes its title from the exercise in the United Kingdom (UK) to capture the essential contents of subjects for degree level studies, including tourism. This, for the first time, produced a broad codification of what it means to study tourism. This stage was characterized by the diversified structure, a national core curriculum in tourism, various teaching methods and a continual improved quality assurance system. On the basis the above analysis, this chapter further explores two institutions as a case study to recapture the reality of the period.Chapter Two discusses the structure and curriculum of British tourism higher education. Firstly, based on the framework for higher education qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it analyzes the structure of British tourism higher education. According to the above framework, the structure of British tourism higher education has five levels that are numbered4-8, three of which are undergraduate and two are postgraduate. Also, it discusses the Foundation Degrees and postgraduate education in tourism. Secondly, it focuses on the curriculum, one of the key elements in British tourism higher education, from its objective, core curriculum, work placement and the internationalization of tourism curriculum. British tourism higher education is dominated by highly vocational aims, which is reflected in the course syllabi, the range of titles in tourism degree courses and the range of departments in which those courses are located. A testament to the confidence placed in the idea of a national curriculum in tourism was the issuing of a series of subject benchmarks by the government's regulatory body, the Quality Assurance Agency in2000, has a great impact on the tourism curriculum. The core curriculum includes:a consideration of the concepts and characteristics of tourism as an area of academic and applied study; an examination of the nature and characteristics of tourists; an analysis of tourism in the communities and environments that it affects; a study of the products, structure, operations and interactions within the tourism industry. On the basis of the above analysis, this chapter analyzes the work placement as well as the internationalization of tourism curriculum.Chapter Three elaborates on the quality assurance of British tourism higher education. Firstly, it introduces the institution and the assessment standards of the quality assurance of British tourism higher education. As the major quality assurance institution, the Quality Assurance Agency and the UK higher education sector have worked together to develop the Academic Infrastructure. This set of UK-wide agreed guidelines and reference points is key to setting and maintaining quality and standards across UK higher education. It includes the following four components——Frameworks for higher education qualifications. Subject benchmark statements, Program specifications, Code of practice——three are mainly concerned with setting standards and one (the Code of practice) is concerned with the management of quality. Secondly, it discusses the internal quality assurance system of British tourism higher education. All universities and colleges that provide higher education in the UK are autonomous. Each university and college of higher education is responsible for the standards of the awards it makes and the quality of the education it provides to its students. Therefore, there are two key headings for quality assurance in the UK:academic standards and academic quality. Academic standards describe the level of achievement that a student must attain to gain an award, gain a specific grade or classification of award, or progress from one level of an award to the next level. Academic quality describes how well the learning opportunities made available to the students enable them to achieve their awards. Each university has its own internal quality assurance procedures:routine monitoring, periodic review and external examining. Whereas the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education checks how well they meet their responsibilities, identifying good practice and making recommendations for improvement.Chapter Four explores the problems of British tourism higher education. Firstly, it analyzes the problems of British tourism higher education from teaching quality, educational aim and national core curriculum. The mass higher education in Britain, the expansion of the number of tourism programs and students inevitably lead to more concern and debate about the teaching quality, educational aim and national core curriculum. People are not only worried about the degradation of the teaching quality, but also disagree between the vocational and liberal aims of tourism education. In order to balance the two aims, various attempts have been tried to construct reasonable British tourism higher education, among which was Tribe's "philosophic practitioner". Besides, the content of the tourism courses has been a debatable issue at the beginning of the appearance of the program. Secondly, it analyzes the influences of government, society and market on the development of British tourism higher education.On the basis of this, Chapter Five outlines the tendency of the development of British tourism higher education. Changes in society, economics, education, information and communication technology, students and environment have a tremendous impact on the educators and teaching methods, which requires British tourism higher education to adapt to these changes in order to develop. Based on the proposals of the future development of tourism higher education, it outlines the diversified and innovative tendency of British tourism higher education in curriculum, teaching, learning, students and subject construction, revealing a convincing and hopeful future. Then, it summarizes the implications of British tourism higher education for Chinese tourism higher education.Conclusion gives a summary of the body. While affirming its positive enlightenment to Chinese tourism higher education, it points out the limitation and immatureness of British tourism higher education. After all a product in a milieu different from China, British tourism higher education is regional, particular and additionally immature due to its short history of development. If we want to bring it into its full play, we should adopt its positive aspects and combine them with contemporary Chinese tourism higher education theories and practices to explore a new and more reasonable way of promoting the sustainable development of Chinese tourism higher education.