INSTITUTIONS’ EXPECTATIONS AND GENDER GAP AMONG FIRST-YEAR TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT STUDENTS IN KWARA STATE, NIGERIA

Akeem Ayodeji Adigun; O J Adediran; M A Adediran

INSTITUTIONS’ EXPECTATIONS AND GENDER GAP AMONG FIRST-YEAR TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT STUDENTS IN KWARA STATE, NIGERIA

Akeem Ayodeji Adigun, O J Adediran, M A Adediran

Abstract

Educational setting in higher institutions of learning is a carefully controlled and structured environment that is quite different from what is in operation is secondary schools or in other lower educational system. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Higher institution may not offer the same process to students; to which first-year students enter with unrealistic expectations towards the academic, infrastructures and social life in higher education system. This quantitative study thus explored the institutions’ expectations and gender gap among 209 first-year tourism and hospitality students in Kwara State, Nigeria. An adapted standardised instrument from Garcia-Aracil (2009) on three dimensions of school satisfaction with 0.862 reliability index was used to determine the respondents’ expectations of higher education. From the questionnaire administration, 197 responses were obtained; while 186 copies were fit for the analyses. The Principal Components Analysis and independent t-test results revealed that the institutions’ expectations of the respondents are higher across the two domains of social and academic factors but less in the aspect of infrastructures irrespective of their gender difference. Therefore, first-year tourism and hospitality management students should be educated on the three major domains of higher education so that they can have realistic expectations of these elements, particularly, the institution infrastructures and the connection they have to their overall educational success.

Keywords

Institutions’ expectations;gender gap;first-year tourism and hospitality management

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