Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration was named the best hospitality and hotel management school in the world for 2015, CEOWorld Magazine announced today.
The ranking was based on a survey send to 18,000 hospitality recruiters and managers of luxury hotels around the world, the magazine said. Following Cornell, The William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration at UNLV was ranked second and The School of Hospitality Business at Michigan State University was listed as third best in the world.
The survey selected 300 hotel management schools around the world and ranked the top 50 “offering [the] best courses in hospitality and hotel management,” according to CEOWorld Magazine.
This recognition follows the Board of Trustee’s approval of the creation of the new College of Business which will combine the School of Hotel Administration with the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. The college will begin operations in the 2016-17 academic year.
While Provost Michael Kotlikoff has emphasized that the new college will aim to unite “fractured programs” he has also sought to reassure concerned Cornellians that the identities of the three schools will remain intact following the merger.
“For a top-tier university like Cornell, an outstanding and integrated business program … is necessary for success,” President Elizabeth Garrett and Kotlikoff wrote in a letter announcing the school’s creation. “Students and faculty need to engage with the economy and business, as well as collaborate with other disciplines.”
However, many students and alumni — including several top donors — have voiced fears that the quality and structure of the schools will be compromised as a result of the merge.
“Essentially all I’ve heard [is] both, ‘We’re doing a new thing and everything’s going to get better,’ and at the same time, ‘Nothing’s going to change,’” hotel student Ian Kimmel ’16 said at an open forum on the College of Business last month. “You can’t do both.”