Enhancing hospitality students learning outcomes in universities: from an instructional to a learning paradigm.

Abstract

Many students with greater diversity of characteristics now access higher education to study hospitality management in larger numbers than ever before. An undesirable outcome attendant to massification is the unsatisfactory performance levels that many hospitality students experience in their learning as attested by unsustainably low pass and throughput rates. This raises a series of critical questions that are at the core of this paper and calls for a critical inquiry into the match between a hotel school’s espoused theory and its theory in use. In simple terms, this implies inquiring into how hotel schools in universities can align their activities with their beliefs and vision concerning how students learn. This conceptual paper seeks to argue for the transition by universities from an instructional to a learning paradigm, as a modus operandi to help hospitality students learn and succeed in their chosen career.