The School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University is a school for hospitality management founded in 1922 as the first four-year school devoted to the field. It is the only such school in the Ivy League. In 1954, Conrad Hilton called it "the greatest hotel school in the world."At Cornell School, No Expense Spared; Tim Minton; The New York Times April 25, 1979, p. C4: "In 1954 Conrad Hilton... was addressing the celebrants. 'He had just said that it was a distinct honor to speak at the greatest hotel school in the world,' recounts Dr. Beck, who was then a doctoral candidate, 'when just at that moment—it couldn't have been timed more perfectly—a wagon went over in the kitchen. It sounds like every plate, bowl and glass in the place had hit the floor.'" Cornellians generally refer to it as the Hotel School, and its students and alumni as Hotelies.

It is one of a few hotel schools in the country that is not part of another academic department, school, or college. The Hotel School became independent of the Department of Home Economics in 1954. Other institutions with separate hospitality colleges include the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the University of Houston, Northern Arizona University and the University of Central Florida.

History

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The hotel school was almost the personal creation of professor Howard B. Meek. He was supported in his efforts by New York City hotel men, a number of whom testified in Albany, New York, urging the legislature to appropriate $11,000 per year for the school. Edward M. Tierney of the Hotel Ansonia stated "There is a dearth of competent hotel employes ^*, and such a course at Cornell would have the endorsement and co-operation of the hotel men generally throughout the country... The war brought a great change in the hotel worker, and the old-time attitude of servility has been replaced by efficient service giving and courtesy. Young men now enter the hotel business just as they would banking, railroad, or commercial life, to find a future in it, and the hotel man must offer the same attractions of commensurate pay and advancement."

In 1927, at the 2nd Annual Hotel Ezra Cornell, Meek convinced a skeptical Ellsworth M. Statler of the value of the concept; Statler declared "I'm converted. Meek can have any damn thing he wants." Statler and his wife became major benefactors of the school, eventually donating a total of more than $10 million.

Profile

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The Hotel School is located on Cornell's central campus in Statler Hall, endowed by Alice Statler, heiress to the Statler Hotel fortune. Directly attached is the Statler Hotel and JW Marriott Executive Education Conference Center (unaffiliated with the chain, which was acquired by Hilton Hotels in 1954), staffed by students and the only hotel on campus. The Statler is one of the leading luxury hotels in Ithaca, New York and is frequently used for accommodations by prominent guests of the university.

The school enrolled 842 undergraduates and 89 graduate students in 2005, hailing from almost 50 countries; it is Cornell's second smallest undergraduate college. Its curriculum focuses on hotel and restaurant management and related business skills. All students must work in positions with direct customer interaction, many of them in the Statler Hotel. The Hotel School employs 38 full-time faculty members, most with notable field management experience.

The Hotel School's course catalog includes several offerings popular among students in other Cornell colleges, notably HADM 430, Introduction to Wines, a wine tasting course which enrolls 600–900 students each semester, as well as frequently oversubscribed cooking courses.

Degrees

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The School of Hotel Administration offers the following degrees on both undergraduate and graduate levels:

• B.S. in Hotel and Restaurant Administration
• M.M.H. or Master of Management in Hospitality
• M.S. (through the Graduate School)
• Ph.D. (through the Graduate School)

Criticism

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In a 1973 article entitled "Hospitality and the Plastic Esthetic," architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable complained of the "banal, standardized, multi-billion-dollar world of bad fabrics, bad prints, bad pictures, bad furniture, bad lamps, bad icebuckets and bad wastebaskets of totally uniform and cheap consistency of taste" which she found in American hotels. "All this is arranged in identical, predictable layouts... you never really know where you are. It is complete loss of identity... The accusation of elitist critical bias, or subjective judgment, just won't wash. Shlock is shlock."

She laid this firmly at the door of two institutions: "the Holiday Inn products division and the Cornell Hotel School.... An overnight stay at the Cornell Hotel School's endowed model hotel wing reveals an interesting fact. The existing formula is enshrined here, and no future hotelkeeper is going to learn anything else. The training sample includes every cliché down to the stale air."

One college guidebook says that by reputation it is supposed an easy program and gives the unattributed quotation "Hotellies have one paper to write a semester and spend the rest of the time getting dressed up and eating cookies.", p. 604

References

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Notes

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External links

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• School of Hotel Administration
• Explore Cornell: School of Hotel Administration
• History of the School and the Nestlé Library

Cornell University | Colleges and schools of Cornell University | Hotels in New York