A pathological study of short-term education program in Iran from stakeholder perspective

Iran’s short-term tourism education program, offered by Iran tourism authority, is the major program to develop industry professional human resources. This research aims to identify the challenges and shortcomings of his program from a stakeholder perspective. To carry out this research, an interview is conducted with 35 persons representing different stakeholder groups. The interviewees were selected using judgmental and snowballing sampling methods. The transcribed data were analyzed through thematic analysis. Based on the analysis, 105 initial codes were revealed and then classified under 24 basic themes. The basic themes, in turn, were grouped under seven organizing themes: structural problems, poor management, screening challenges, content shortcomings, assessment flaws, educational failures, and evaluation and monitoring deficiencies. The findings help researchers, policy-makers and planners to have deeper understanding of the current short-term tourism education program. It also helps solving problems and challenges and paves the way for holistic, integrated and balanced development of tourism industry, economic growth and sustainable employment.