International links benefit hospitality college

A hospitality provider comes through its AUQA audit with flying colours. The Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School (BMIHMS) and its sister campus the Australian International Hotel School (AIHS) are the two parts of a small, elite, internationally recognised provider of hospitality education, with just 407 students enrolled in its campus in Leura in the Blue Mountains and 141 in Canberra. In what was mostly a complimentary report, AUQA said alumni and current students are overwhelmingly positive about their education, staff are happy, and there are strong industry partnerships, a culture of continuous improvement and an extensive international network that offers huge potential for staff and student exchange, research activity and joint curriculum development via its inclusion in the Laureate network. The two schools are also three years into a partnership with UQ that has endorsed its bachelors degrees and offered articulation pathways into UQ programs, external moderation of BMIHMS programs, academic monitoring, some combined research activity and membership of academic governing committees. While AUQA acknowledges the change process following the Laureate takeover is still being bedded down, it says there is the potential for substantial benefits from belonging to such a vast, quality, international education empire – most of which have not yet been realised. Laureate includes 45 universities in 20 countries offering undergraduate and postgraduate degrees to 500,000 students, including several, such as the Glion Hotel School in Switzerland, specialising in tourism and hospitality. Some benefits have started to flow through, AUQA noted, with the two schools beginning to “adopt Laureate best practice approaches from within the Laureate network and maintaining a strong focus on business practices, marketing and planning”. “The potential for BMIHMS in participating with the Laureate network is excellent, particularly with regards to the possibility of future study abroad options for students, for staff teaching exchanges and for undertaking review and planning activities such as benchmarking,” the report says. It notes staff have begun to take up online staff development opportunities with universities in the Laureate network but was concerned with workload issues finding that many staff seemed to be struggling with finding sufficient time ability to prepare, teach and conduct research. While acknowledging the “enthusiasm and experience of many of the staff”, the panel was concerned that some taught across “a far too wide a span of subjects given their areas of expertise and qualifications”. It said there was also a tension between teaching load and ability to do conduct research, with many staff undertaking research after hours. AUQA was also not convinced there was a “comprehensive culture of scholarship” and critical of the general level of qualifications of staff. “Whilst the panel found pockets of activity which contribute to a culture of scholarship … there is as yet no depth of understanding of how these elements could combine and contribute to the BMIHMS culture of scholarship,” the report said. Guy Bentleym BMIHMS CEO, said that over all the review was “a reasonably fair and accurate report”. “There are always things you wish they would interpret differently.” Bentley almost without exception staff held the qualification they were teaching plus one, with some exceptions in the masters program. “It’s very hard to find PhD qualified staff in hospitality,” said Bentley, pointing out that in tourism and hospitality experience was generally an accepted surrogate for formal qualifications. “We have a lot of industry specialists teaching, who only have masters degrees. But there aren’t too many PhD-qualified industry trained people running around the place.” Bentley was also perplexed about comments which questioned the role of uniforms and roll calls in “an adult learning environment”. “It makes you wonder if the AUQA panel fully appreciates the role private providers play. The idea of hospitality training without a uniform is almost unthinkable,” Bentley said. Overall, BMIHMS came away with five commendations and 12 recommendations.