ABSTRACT
The establishment and growth of tourism degrees has taken place in a context of growth, widening participation and increased societal interest in the employability outcomes of graduates. The first concerted government effort to grow the number of higher education (HE) graduates in the United Kingdom took place in the 1960s, following the Robins report (1963).1 This report set the tone of seeing HE as a positive force able to benefit not only graduates, but also society at large (Barnett et al., 1994), with a stronger emphasis being placed on the contribution of graduates to the labour market (Ward, 2006). The increasing influence of the labour market and the concerns of employers on HE was further evident in the 1980s (Bennett et al., 2000). The 1987 White Paper ‘Higher Education: Meeting the challenge’ saw the lower HE participation rates as impacting negatively upon the productivity of the economy. The UK government estimated that the percentage of young people going to university was not sufficient to reflect the needs of the knowledge-based economy and undertook a policy of HE expansion by allowing polytechnics to assume university status (Jarvis et al., 1998; Bennett et al., 2000). This trend was not confined to the UK (Brew, 2006). For example, Australia saw the introduction of a widening participation agenda aimed at 40 per cent of the younger population having at least a bachelor-level qualification (Dredge et al., 2012). The expansion of HE was also seen as a social project, enabling access by a wider proportion of young people to the opportunities offered by HE (HM Treasury, 2004). In the early 21st century HE continued to be seen as having a central role to play, with an emphasis on the knowledge economy, and ensuring competitiveness in the global market (Jarvis et al., 1998; Bennett et al., 2000; Blackstone, 2001). The British government in 2005 was of the view that HE delivers ‘the advanced skills that a knowledge-intensive economy values’ (HM Treasury, 2005:8).
