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I am working for an international hotel chain as a HR manager. I’m writing to share some of my opinions on the heat topic in the internet of “Top 10 International Hospitality Management Schools in the World (made by Taylor Nelson Sofres (hereafter TNS)”.
Nowadays, an increasing number of young people would like to launch their career in hospitality management industry, for some well-off families, they prefer to send their children to overseas to receive the hospitality education. I am concerned with their choices for hospitality management schools, because confusions are easy to be caused among thousands of hospitality management schools around the world. Parents and students are long for guidance such as ranking lists based on the fact that universities in British and America always have their own rankings. Unfortunately, this mindset is taken advantage by certain institutions or groups; they fabricate biased ranking lists for their own benefits.
Background:
As early as 2007, Laureate Hospitality Education (hereafter LHE) invited TNS ,a marketing research company in UK, to design a survey on “Top 10 International Hospitality Management Schools in the World for an International Career”. By the year 2010, another “Top 10 International Hospitality Management Schools in the World for an International Career” was published in the website of LHE and various overseas education agencies, which turned out to be another show made by LHE. I couldn’t accept such kind of academic fraud as a Top Hotel HR Manager. Thanks to the internet, I am able to apply my experiences in hospitality industry to tell truth from falsehood. I did not mean to start a war of words but to ask those fellows who are in the hospitality industry to look at the so-called ranking list with acute judgments.
Now let’s move on to the main part of the article that how to look at this survey report of ranking list scientifically. I would like to compare it with ranking lists made by British and America. Let’s make it simple and to the point, to answer the question whether the ranking list reliable or not, we must look at it in three key aspects, they are：
1）Who initiates it ---- The stand of the ranking list
2）Who is involved ----- A key factor in the investigation report, i.e. where does source of data come from?
3）Who recognize it --- feedback from the authoritative institute
1、who initiates it: Laureate Hospitality Education
TNS ranking list: Laureate Hospitality Education is its initiator as well as financial contributor. LHE is the parent company of Les Roches International School of Hotel Management Switzerland，Glion Institute of Higher Education, both ranked No.2nd，Les Roches International School of Hotel Management, Marbella of Spain, ranked No. 6th
American ranking list：The most authoritative ranking list of universities in America is made by the magazine of US News & World Report. Because its nominee is recognized by the authoritative institution made of professionals from American council on Education.
British ranking list：So far, The Times，The Financial, The Daily Telegraph and Guardian has released different ranking lists of British universities. Owing to the long history and complete data, the ranking list made by The Times is accepted by most overseas students. Ranking lists in UK are renewed over time since 1992, till now, there are already 110 universities included.
Obviously, most university ranking lists in British and America are made by either acknowledged media or research institutions to ensure its fairness and truthfulness, which reveals the ultimate intention of ranking lists. It is a worldwide tendency that an evaluation system will stands outside the regular educational system and be the model of separating teaching and evaluating. Even those ranking lists made in British and America faced with acrid critics, most of them point out that these ranking surveys depend on their own standards. Some critics argued that these ranking lists could lead to some “Numbers Game” among universities, while some university administrative staff confessed that they would adopt the strategy of hurting reputation of rivals during investigation and some even refuse to cooperate with media that initiates the ranking survey in avoidance of being enslaved to the media. Those comparative unbiased ranking lists are even doubted by public, how could the ranking list of “Top 10 International Hospitality Management Schools in the World for an International Career” initiated by the biggest beneficiary of this survey be reliable? In addition, TNS never made any survey on British universities. Could it come to the conclusion that its objectivity and justification could not be recognized by British?
2、A key factor in the investigation report — “who is involved”, i.e. where does the source of data come from?
In terms of statistics, the position of the survey should be classified as conclusive research, which is supposed to be formal market research activity. It is an open and referable report, but not random, internal exploratory research. When exterminating sampling method and sample size, it is necessary to consider the objective and investigation of the survey as well as the requirement of accuracy (i.e. sampling error). Besides, the possibility of viability, the control of non-sampling error and the consideration of budget should also be included. However, the investigative report from TNS does not contain all these factors.
First, let us analyze the whole sample: when sampling in conventional manner, the larger the sample size is, the higher the estimation accuracy and the cost will be. As a market research company, TNS pointed out that the potential respondents of this survey (target population) are up to 50,000, while 10,000 of which opened this e-mail. And only 181 samples (less than 275 samples in 2007) are used for analysis, although the sample size does not depend on the size of the target population. Where do the other 819 questionnaires go to? Are these questionnaires filled blank or invalid? Dose the selection process involved in artificial filter? I will keeping questioning until these question are answered. “Under the case of sufficient financial resources and considerable objectives, the survey company has the ability to obtain more data and more accurate information when making important decisions, which requires a larger sample." (Bobby, "Social Research Methods", 2005). However, the sample size TNS used does not reached 20% of the overall sample. Thus, I believe that there is a great error in reporting data.
Second, in the light of investigative dimensions: it’s known from the report that this research is based on “the graduates’ preference to the schools". Therefore the limitation is obvious. Do the respondents know about or even hear of the listed 74 hotel management schools? Have the respondents interviewed, recruited, or contacted with graduates from all these 74 institutions? Which schools are included in the list? What are the criteria of choosing these schools?
In the original text of this report, a very important point is highlighted: "Provision of instruction in English was a requirement for inclusion in the list of international hospitality management schools", which means that all the listed 74 schools must adopt English as their teaching language. However, it is funny that two schools out of ten can not meet this requirement, they are: Vatel Hotel Management School (France), ranked 7th, and Geneva Hotel Management School (Switzerland), ranked 10th. In Vatel Hotel Management School (France), most courses are taught in French. For example, in Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux campus, French is the only teaching language. While in Nimes campus, only one course is taught in English. And there are no courses taught in English in Geneva Hotel Management School.
Out of the 10 schools on the rank, there are already 2 schools do not satisfy the criteria of the survey. When it comes to the remaining 64 schools, how many unqualified nominee will be come out?
Besides, in order to prove the reliability and objective of the survey, the report has quoted in the Key Finding that “interviewees can list the name of the hotel school that they think to be the best, if they are not provided as choices from the survey”. The doubtful fact is that, if neither Les Roches International School of Hotel Management nor Glion Hotel School are out of the list for choice, but needed to be filled in when comes to interviewee’s mind, would the result of such survey be the same with the existing one?
Nowadays, an increasing number of young people would like to launch their career in hospitality management industry, for some well-off families, they prefer to send their children to overseas to receive the hospitality education. I am concerned with their choices for hospitality management schools, because confusions are easy to be caused among thousands of hospitality management schools around the world. Parents and students are long for guidance such as ranking lists based on the fact that universities in British and America always have their own rankings. Unfortunately, this mindset is taken advantage by certain institutions or groups; they fabricate biased ranking lists for their own benefits.
Background:
As early as 2007, Laureate Hospitality Education (hereafter LHE) invited TNS ,a marketing research company in UK, to design a survey on “Top 10 International Hospitality Management Schools in the World for an International Career”. By the year 2010, another “Top 10 International Hospitality Management Schools in the World for an International Career” was published in the website of LHE and various overseas education agencies, which turned out to be another show made by LHE. I couldn’t accept such kind of academic fraud as a Top Hotel HR Manager. Thanks to the internet, I am able to apply my experiences in hospitality industry to tell truth from falsehood. I did not mean to start a war of words but to ask those fellows who are in the hospitality industry to look at the so-called ranking list with acute judgments.
Now let’s move on to the main part of the article that how to look at this survey report of ranking list scientifically. I would like to compare it with ranking lists made by British and America. Let’s make it simple and to the point, to answer the question whether the ranking list reliable or not, we must look at it in three key aspects, they are：
1）Who initiates it ---- The stand of the ranking list
2）Who is involved ----- A key factor in the investigation report, i.e. where does source of data come from?
3）Who recognize it --- feedback from the authoritative institute
1、who initiates it: Laureate Hospitality Education
TNS ranking list: Laureate Hospitality Education is its initiator as well as financial contributor. LHE is the parent company of Les Roches International School of Hotel Management Switzerland，Glion Institute of Higher Education, both ranked No.2nd，Les Roches International School of Hotel Management, Marbella of Spain, ranked No. 6th
American ranking list：The most authoritative ranking list of universities in America is made by the magazine of US News & World Report. Because its nominee is recognized by the authoritative institution made of professionals from American council on Education.
British ranking list：So far, The Times，The Financial, The Daily Telegraph and Guardian has released different ranking lists of British universities. Owing to the long history and complete data, the ranking list made by The Times is accepted by most overseas students. Ranking lists in UK are renewed over time since 1992, till now, there are already 110 universities included.
Obviously, most university ranking lists in British and America are made by either acknowledged media or research institutions to ensure its fairness and truthfulness, which reveals the ultimate intention of ranking lists. It is a worldwide tendency that an evaluation system will stands outside the regular educational system and be the model of separating teaching and evaluating. Even those ranking lists made in British and America faced with acrid critics, most of them point out that these ranking surveys depend on their own standards. Some critics argued that these ranking lists could lead to some “Numbers Game” among universities, while some university administrative staff confessed that they would adopt the strategy of hurting reputation of rivals during investigation and some even refuse to cooperate with media that initiates the ranking survey in avoidance of being enslaved to the media. Those comparative unbiased ranking lists are even doubted by public, how could the ranking list of “Top 10 International Hospitality Management Schools in the World for an International Career” initiated by the biggest beneficiary of this survey be reliable? In addition, TNS never made any survey on British universities. Could it come to the conclusion that its objectivity and justification could not be recognized by British?
2、A key factor in the investigation report — “who is involved”, i.e. where does the source of data come from?
In terms of statistics, the position of the survey should be classified as conclusive research, which is supposed to be formal market research activity. It is an open and referable report, but not random, internal exploratory research. When exterminating sampling method and sample size, it is necessary to consider the objective and investigation of the survey as well as the requirement of accuracy (i.e. sampling error). Besides, the possibility of viability, the control of non-sampling error and the consideration of budget should also be included. However, the investigative report from TNS does not contain all these factors.
First, let us analyze the whole sample: when sampling in conventional manner, the larger the sample size is, the higher the estimation accuracy and the cost will be. As a market research company, TNS pointed out that the potential respondents of this survey (target population) are up to 50,000, while 10,000 of which opened this e-mail. And only 181 samples (less than 275 samples in 2007) are used for analysis, although the sample size does not depend on the size of the target population. Where do the other 819 questionnaires go to? Are these questionnaires filled blank or invalid? Dose the selection process involved in artificial filter? I will keeping questioning until these question are answered. “Under the case of sufficient financial resources and considerable objectives, the survey company has the ability to obtain more data and more accurate information when making important decisions, which requires a larger sample." (Bobby, "Social Research Methods", 2005). However, the sample size TNS used does not reached 20% of the overall sample. Thus, I believe that there is a great error in reporting data.
Second, in the light of investigative dimensions: it’s known from the report that this research is based on “the graduates’ preference to the schools". Therefore the limitation is obvious. Do the respondents know about or even hear of the listed 74 hotel management schools? Have the respondents interviewed, recruited, or contacted with graduates from all these 74 institutions? Which schools are included in the list? What are the criteria of choosing these schools?
In the original text of this report, a very important point is highlighted: "Provision of instruction in English was a requirement for inclusion in the list of international hospitality management schools", which means that all the listed 74 schools must adopt English as their teaching language. However, it is funny that two schools out of ten can not meet this requirement, they are: Vatel Hotel Management School (France), ranked 7th, and Geneva Hotel Management School (Switzerland), ranked 10th. In Vatel Hotel Management School (France), most courses are taught in French. For example, in Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux campus, French is the only teaching language. While in Nimes campus, only one course is taught in English. And there are no courses taught in English in Geneva Hotel Management School.
Out of the 10 schools on the rank, there are already 2 schools do not satisfy the criteria of the survey. When it comes to the remaining 64 schools, how many unqualified nominee will be come out?
Besides, in order to prove the reliability and objective of the survey, the report has quoted in the Key Finding that “interviewees can list the name of the hotel school that they think to be the best, if they are not provided as choices from the survey”. The doubtful fact is that, if neither Les Roches International School of Hotel Management nor Glion Hotel School are out of the list for choice, but needed to be filled in when comes to interviewee’s mind, would the result of such survey be the same with the existing one?