China

In China, leisure tourism in modern sense began after China's implementation of economic reform and opening-up in 1978. China's tourism education has developed with the sustained growth of China's tourism industry. Full-time tourism education at schools started in 1978. Before, there was only on-job training with no tourism schools and colleges at all in China. In October 1978, Jiangsu Tourism Technical School (now Nanjing Tourism School), a secondary vocational school, was founded, and in October 1979 China's first tourism institution of higher learning – Shanghai Institute of Tourism – was established. The founding of the two schools was the prelude of the development of full-time tourism education in China. Since then tourism schools and colleges mushroomed throughout the country, such as Sichun Tourism School, Guilin Specialized Tourism Institute, and the Beijing Institute of Tourism. In 1980, the Beijing Second Foreign Language University (now Beijing International Studies University) was transferred to the direct administration of the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA). Since the beginning of 1980s, CNTA appropriated funds for several universities across the country, such as Dalian Foreign Language Institute, Nankai University, and Northwest University, to help establish tourism programs in order to meet the urgent needs for tourism professionals with higher educational background. Entering the 1990s, with the deepening of reform in general higher education of the country, and the growing demand for professionals with higher tourism educational background due to the rapid growth of China's tourism industry, many institutions of higher learning across the country established tourism specialties or programs on the basis of existing relevant programs. China's tourism education entered a period of fast development in the 1990s. Table 1 shows the growth of number of tourism schools and colleges and students from 1990 to 2003.