Abstract:

This paper aimed to explore how polytechnic colleges offering tourism and hospitality programmes at National Diploma level three are monitored and supported. The aim of monitoring and support of institutions offering such programmes is to benchmark the minimum level of knowledge and skills the industry expects from graduates. The objective is that graduates who have completed training are expected to exhibit in-depth skills and knowledge which reflect acceptable standards nationally set. The major challenges have mainly been encountered when engaging graduates who show the little synergy between the knowledge and skills they gained and the knowledge and skills expected by their prospective employers. It is against this backdrop that this study sought to assess where the gap existed between expected graduate earned skills and what organizations experienced upon hiring the graduates. This paper focused on assessing existing literature on the extent to which the tourism and hospitality programmes offered in polytechnic colleges were monitored and supported since indications were that, graduates lacked certain relevant skills the industry needed. Rogan and Grayson’s 2003 theoretical framework indicated that the key instrumental strategies used to monitor and support programmes, highly influence the quality of graduates. The existence of weak educational strategies hardly provides sufficient results in monitoring and support of programmes, if standards are compromised. Thus, the type of graduates becomes redundant and irrelevant to the industry. Desk research based on emperical literature review obtained from my thesis assisted in thoroughly scrutinizing and thematically analysing how monitoring and support of tourism programmes in polytechnic colleges affected their running in Zimbabwe. Results revealed huge gaps caused by insufficient monitoring and support of programmes. There is a need, therefore, for collaboration between stakeholders and polytechnic colleges to address poor monitoring and support of programmes, affecting national labour requirements. It was, recommended that, stakeholders should influence the monitoring of institutions by offering sufficient support to promote conducive teaching and learning environment.

Keywords:

Monitor, support, assessment, policy, stakeholders, collective bargaining.