Hospitality schools should deliver soft skills courses

THERE ARE many ways to define quality in education. The most common metrics are accreditation, academic partnerships, faculty profiles (ratio of PhDs), employment offers per graduate, starting salaries for graduates and buildings and sports facilities.

In my opinion, all of these are important and relevant, but the one criterion that I believe to be paramount is – The ability of the graduate to significantly impact the future product and profitability of the industry. 

The problem with this criterion is that it is difficult to measure and almost always the impact point occurs sometime between eight to 12 years after the student has graduated. With such a long term quality measurement period, and deanships and academic management which change every 10 to 12 years, we find that most academic management teams are actually being given evaluations which truly belonged to their predecessors. 

Lots of similar time latency and quality conundrums impact the quality of educational institutions. For example, we often find faculty and management who are measuring and improving on the educational quality referencing when they were in school – but it’s been long since they graduated and potentially the world and industry has moved on from their times!

Right, back to the present. Here is what I would suggest we work on in Indian hospitality institutions for the next 10 years:

Hard skills for the present – Ensure that every graduate has hands-on skills which are needed in the hospitality industry. Skills should be acquired in the school laboratories as well through industry internships. What a good skill base provides is a foundation for life and the graduates will use this experience throughout their career.

Knowledge for tomorrow – Most textbooks deliver knowledge of the past; mainly due to the time it takes to research and print data. Education institutions should continuously augment textbooks with online directories and articles and most importantly help their students to read voraciously and “read between the lines”. Keeping one’s knowledge current and then finding ways to apply this knowledge in dynamic environments is precious; since the modern world changes at a rapid pace and all concepts are being refreshed every five to seven years.

Attitude for the future – Encourage every student to live their lives and their art to the fullest. To cherish and respect themselves, their peers, their customers and their industry. Some say that attitude cannot be taught; either you have it or you don’t. I disagree. In my opinion, attitude is like a rough diamond that one finds within a coal mine – it inherently exists, and the role of the hospitality education institution is to cut, polish and embellish the attitude – to help their graduate shine! To help their graduate to understand how to use their positive attitude throughout life and in every situation and every adversity. Attitude alone can work miracles.

Soft skills – A modern management school buzzword, but known to be the best hospitality organisations for decades. Hospitality schools in India should deliver these in abundance – time management, critical thinking, conflict management, adaptability, problem solving, teamwork, personal presentation, public speaking, etc. etc. The way to transfer soft skills is not by adding a course credit on soft skills, but by adding the adaptation and practice of soft skills to all courses in the curriculum and also into extracurricular campus life. So, soft skills should be flooding every inch of the campus. I would further extend the case of soft skills and encourage hospitality schools to start deliver soft skills courses for all students of every University College in India.

Academic rigour and faculty relevance – These are core pillars for faculty evaluation. Ensure that whatever your faculty deliver in the classroom has been well researched, per reviewed and is always presented in detail – the rigour of education. Increase relevance in the faculty by encouraging industry secondments, training and consulting assignments – this ensures that faculty stay relevant to industry and trends and also transfer the same into their courses. Rigour without relevance to industry is boring and outdated content; and relevance without details and rigour is just war stories from old “has beens”.

Campus that represents excellence – Last point on my recommendations list would be to ensure that education is delivered in a campus that represents the values and benchmarks of the hospitality industry – so every day of education is also another day in a hospitality environment. Institution campuses do not need to be gold plated, but they need to be well finished, planned and deliver a consistent quality experience at each touchpoint. Every student, faculty and visitor to the campus should feel valued through the finishing, cleaning and meticulous planning that goes into “creating the scene”. Statistics tells us that up to 40 per cent of subconscious learning happens from the walls and environment provided by the institution – so make the walls talk!

If you have been reading thus far; and agree with any of my points, then I thank you! If you disagree and have better suggestions, then please write to me on X (twitter) @YetiSinh and Instagram @yetisinh or LinkedIn @ YS & Associates.sStay strong and stay happy!