The demand for educated workers is growing in hospitality.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the leisure and hospitality industry provides 15.8 million jobs in the United States. Those jobs are increasingly in management. The number of food service manager jobs in Missouri grew 48 percent between 2013 and 2015, according to data from the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Lodging management jobs in Missouri grew 13 percent over the same period; meeting, convention and event planner jobs, 34 percent.
Today’s hospitality professionals need management skills if they want to turn their passions into careers. However, the nature of hospitality businesses means that career professionals frequently have unpredictable schedules and are usually on a weekly rotation for days off. For these people, to go back to school in the conventional way is a major financial sacrifice – risking continued education that does not immediately return higher wages.
As a solution, the hospitality management program offers an online bachelor’s degree program to meet the growing employer demand for educated workers. This program gives students the flexibility to study around their demanding schedules. The online degree program is designed to target audiences who would otherwise not be able to study on campus, such as current employees in the hospitality industry or those individuals who want to work as mangers in hospitality; United States military’s members, including active-duty, veterans and dependents; graduates from two-year hospitality and culinary programs; community college transfers; and high school educators that teach hospitality and tourism subjects (e.g. ProStart and HTMP).
BestColleges.com ranks the program No. 4 of the Best Online Programs in hospitality management. As one of the first hospitality management degrees, MU offers a cutting-edge, comprehensive learning environment that supplements hands-on training and industry experience with the business and management skills needed to excel in global hospitality workplaces.
Our faculty members bring their real-world experience from working in the hospitality industry into the virtual world to help the classes come alive. The mission of the hospitality management program is to nurture future leaders where students learn management, human resources, marketing and other business skills online. Working professionals can apply their new abilities immediately in their current jobs. With the benefit of supporting a flexible learning lifestyle, these online courses are nearly identical to the hospitality management courses offered by the in-seat mode, taught by the same professors and with regards to content, learning objectives, and assessment (For details of the online program, please refer to: hospitality.missouri.edu.)
Our industry’s future is in grounding its workforce in management expertise and reducing workers who transition to and from hospitality industry jobs into a larger career trajectory. Through the educated workforce, we can raise our professionalism and offer quality products and services that exceed the expectations of our customers. Hospitality companies who wish to be seen as the preferred company to work for, that are committed to professional development, should encourage their employees to apply. Better yet, they should partner with the University of Missouri by following the lead of the Starbucks College Achievement Plan and offering its employees the chance to finish a bachelor’s degree with full tuition coverage.
The program is currently accepting applications for students who want to begin their studies in January. Learn more online today!