The Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management has held a day’s consultative meeting with significant industry players in the hospitality and tourism sector to acquire their input on how to improve the quality of the academic programs offered by the department.
Ahead of the revision of the two existing programmes of the department, BSc Hospitality Management and BSc Tourism Management next year, the meeting was part of the department’s proactive efforts to ensure that the department gets opinions from hospitality and tourism management industry players on what they expect from graduates who come into the job market.
Speaking to ATL FM NEWS, head of the department, Professor Issahaku Adams said the engagement was to gain inputs from the industry players to enrich the content of the two courses in hospitality management.
He said, “it is necessitated by the fact that we are revising our 2 existing curricula in line with GTEC’s requirements that says that for every 5 years the existing academic program has to be reaccredited”.
He was confident that the contributions that will be gathered at the end of the meeting will help improve the content of their curriculum in line with the directives of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission.
He also indicated that for academia to produce graduates who will meet the demands of society, it is important that stakeholders from both academia and industry work together.
“In the interest of delivering quality, relevant education to meet the evolving needs of society, it is always important that the stakeholders come together to engage because academia cannot know it all”, he intimated.
Professor Adams also hinted that the desire to engage the industry players and stakeholders was to get students tap into the experiences of practitioners adding that the reviewed curriculum will have practitioners coming to the lecture rooms to share their experiences.
He further called on the government to formulate policies that will benefit both academia and industry even as both work together to promote national development.
According to him, the government has a key role to play in helping to promote a healthy relationship between academia and industry because the policies and programs of government tend to influence the activities of both sectors.
Source: Rosemond Asmah/ATLFMNEWS
