Exploring the state of tourism in Iran's higher education

In tourism, like any other service industry, the people offering service are a constituent part of the product, and their expertise, theoretical knowledge, and job skills undeniably affect the quality of services. Hence, Composition and implementation of human resource development strategies is of a great importance and education/training, therein, plays a major part. Higher education, compared to other educational levels, is of greater significance for being in charge of training expert human resources to create knowledge and transfer it to the lower levels. Among the component indices of higher education system, the scientific criteria, including learning factors, teaching factors, and learning conditions and facilities, correlate directly with the quality of academic courses. In order to explore the state of these criteria in tourism academic courses, two models are used: horizontal model (based on the scientific nature of courses) and vertical model (based on the education level and hierarchy). Having investigated the indices of scientific system of tourism education based on these two models, it allows ascertaining the efficiency of education system in terms of form and content.This research focuses on identification of the model and quality of scientific and learning criteria of tourism in Iran’s higher education, utilizing a comparative-longitudinal research method. A comparative study was also performed between Iran and Turkey, using interviews and secondary data analysis.Results indicate that although the number of students and tourism education centers has increased dramatically in Iran, the development model has not conformed to the selected horizontal and vertical models of the research in terms of form and content. In addition, serious shortcomings seem to exist in learning facilities and conditions of all educational courses.