Times have changed since the founding of the US’s first hospitality college in 1922, Cornell School of Hotel Administration. The lodging business has grown from your traditional roadside motor inn, to publicly held, multi-national hotel corporations, comprising a $3.5 trillion industry.

Though since its inception, under its founder Dean Howard Meek’s ideal of hospitality is “the subtle anticipation of human needs,” Cornell School of Hotel Administration is still renowned as one of the best hospitality management schools in the world, and is the only hospitality school maintaining an Ivy League status.

Dean of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, Michael Johnson told USA Today his school “used to be a hospitality school with a business focus.” Johnson now says, “We’re a business school with a hospitality focus.”

His school trains students for senior level, corporate management, by offering hospitality coursework ranging from hotel management and operations to resort design and construction to financing and hospitality marketing.

Cornell offers 4 Hotel Management programs:

Bachelor of Science in Hotel Administration,

with required courses like Hospitality Facilities Management, Hospitality Financial Management, Culinary Theory and Practice, and Business and Hospitality Law

Master of Management in Hospitality,

with courses such as Human Resource Management, Managerial Communication, and Competitive Strategies for the Hospitality Industry

MS Degree in Hotel Administration & PhD in Hotel Administration,

with highly individualized programs preparing hospitality graduate students for careers in academics

Cornell even offers a 3 week summer program for high school students interested in pursuing jobs and careers in hotels and hospitality. The Cornell School of Hotel Administration preps these young hospitality students for college and eventually jobs in a variety of hotel career fields. It teaches management strategies of the world’s largest hotel companies including, Wyndham Worldwide, Hilton, Marriott, Starwood and Hyatt. The course finishes with their CHESS Hotel Simulation, an exercise simulating the administration of a 250 room hotel property.

The Cornell Hotel Administration program receives about 4 times as many applications from students than it can accommodate. It has 100 graduates yearly moving into hospitality careers, ranging from restaurant and hotel management to real-estate and hotel construction, with job salaries usually starting around $40,000.

There are many renowned scholarships available to the hotel school’s students, including the Joseph Drown Foundation scholarship, awarding yearly one Cornell senior $15,000 cash, and the RC Kopf Student Achievement Award. The RC Kopf awards students with $10,000 cash and an 8 week wine tour of restaurants and vineyards through California, France and Italy.

Hilton Hotels founder, Conrad Hilton once called Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration “the greatest school in the world.” Cornell continues to live up to the claim, boasting the largest full-time faculty and most extensive curriculum of any hospitality program. Hotel internships and entry level job opportunities are also prevalent with more than 100 hotel companies recruiting Cornell students for full time, summer and seasonal employment.

As part of an Ivy League university, Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration has a long running tradition of excellence in hospitality. Now, 90 years after its founding it continues to set the pace for the other 200 colleges in the US that have followed in Cornell’s path and have begun offering hospitality management programs to students wishing to pursue the hospitality and hotel careers of tomorrow.