Higher Education in Tourism and Hospitality in the Philippines: Stakeholders, Forces, Processes, and Outcomes

Review Of Related Literature

Scholars have noted that the power to shape higher education does not fall exclusively now in the hands of universities. That is to say, a more democratic process currently permeates university halls in terms of curriculum planning. Belhassen and Caton (2011, pp 1389-1390), observe that “the seat of epistemic power is shifting from disciplines traditionally contained within the universities to the public sphere, where growing numbers of people are demanding that knowledge be produced in line with mass understandings and values”.

The government and industry are among the top stakeholders which have influenced the development of tourism and hospitality curricula, with Dredge et al. (2012) arguing that they are both responsible for the persistence of an economic perspective of tourism. Governments, in particular, have been known to launch curricular initiatives that broadly lead to economic growth (Belhassen & Caton, 2011; Tribe & Liburd, 2016) and narrowly to address education and research issues (Holloway, 2005). In the UK, for example, Airey and Tribe (2005, p. 48) explain that fear of letting tourism simply “mean what academics wanted it to mean” influenced the standardization of curricula by the government. Thus, according to Airey and Tribe, it was the UK government, through the National Liaison Group for Higher Education, which pushed for the creation of a core curriculum for tourism education back in the 1990s. Coles, Hall and Duval (2009) explain the pervasive role of the governments of the UK, New Zealand and Australia in the institutionalization of tourism in higher education, through their initiatives in research assessment.