Steve, Certainly the problem goes to the heart of central
education policy as you suggest, and indeed the prevailing
ideological climate which to some extent influences
student choice. If I am not mistaken there are
tourism-related degree courses in other countries which are
in humanities and social science faculties.  If so it would
be interesting to hear the thoughts of our colleagues
outside the UK on this matter. Raoul


On Thu, 07 Jun 2001 12:22:55 +0000 (GMT) Steve Butts
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> Dear All,
>
> This is a bit rambling as I'm marking as well, but I hope relevant.
> Several folks have raised the issue of whether or not anthro/social
> science aspects of tourism should be in business schools, the value
> of them etc.  Certainly the value of these kinds of modules/content
> is undisputed from an academic, personal, and even business point of
> view.  As I'm preaching to the choir I won't say more about that.
>
> Nevertheless, I would submit the difficulty in seperating out these
> kinds of modules and developing them into degree courses is that they
> are not attractive to prospective students.  To illustrate, I would
> challenge anyone to get a group of students to do a degree called
> "Anthropology of Tourism" or "Philosophy of Tourism."  The
> traditional student comes to university not even knowing what
> anthropology or even what philosophy is all about--thus they are not
> going to sign up to such a course.  Yet as has already been said,
> when they do a "Tourism Management" type degree and get offered these
> topics as modules, they are without fail some of the most popular
> ones going.
>
> However, to bring this back to what Raoul said, the present
> education/social/ecomomic structure says that things with
> "management" in the title are okay, because they somehow refer to
> "Business."  What is amazing is that students are equally as ignorant
> of what "Business" degrees actually entail as they are of the
> fictional ones previously mentioned.  But they choose them.  And they
> choose them because of the system we live in.
>
> What can we do?  Not sure.  By making sure anthro/social science type
> modules are built into "Tourism Management" courses we can chip away
> at the existing structure.  And building them in and keeping them may
> be less of a problem than we think--if students are given a free
> choice they will keep choosing them, although I recognise this
> doesn't always happen.  From my point of view, the education system
> in place before students come to university needs to be expose
> students to a wide range of ideas.  But as long as central government
> is setting the curriculum, and forcing blinders on students, creative
> thought and informed choice will continue to be lacking in the
> majority of the  population.
>
> I'll desist.
>
>
> Steve Butts
>
>
>
>
>
> Dr. Steve Butts
> Senior Lecturer
> Univeristy of Plymouth
> Seale-Hayne Faculty
> Department of Land Use & Rural Management
> Newton Abbot
> Devon TQ12 6NQ
>
> tel. 01626 325640
> messages 01626 325661
> fax  01626 325657
> e-mail [log in to unmask]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. Raoul Bianchi
Centre for Leisure & Tourism Studies
Stapleton House
University of North London
277-281 Holloway Road
London N7 8HN
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Tel: +44 (0)20 7607 2789 Ext.3308
Fax: +44 (0)20 7753 5051
http://www.unl.ac.uk/celts
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