Camden business school offers bachelor’s degree in hospitality management
Atlantic City-based program prepares students for state’s growing hotel and resort industry
Archived article from May 10, 2004
By Melissa Payton
They’re not your typical Rutgers undergraduates. Instead of attending classes by day at one of Rutgers’ three main campuses, they spend their evenings at a community college a few blocks from the splashy resorts of Atlantic City. One works a graveyard shift as a casino manager, another does destination sales for the city’s Convention and Visitors Authority and one was recently laid off from the luxury Borgata Hotel.
And though it’s been decades since their high school years, they are all earning bachelor’s degrees in Rutgers’ hospitality management program in Atlantic City.
“I have a son in college and one in high school,” said Marcus Cade, an employee at Atlantic City’s convention authority, who will graduate in May, along with five others in the program. “There are many nights we’re all sitting around the kitchen table doing homework, and I’ll stop, look around and think, this is a trip!”
The program, started in 2001 by the Rutgers School of Business–Camden, was one of the first to grant a bachelor’s degree to students enrolled in Atlantic City. (Two smaller New Jersey colleges now offer similar programs.) This year 45 Rutgers students are taking evening classes at Atlantic Cape Community College, which consists of one building and a parking lot less than a mile from the famous boardwalk. The Rutgers partnership with ACCC lets students receive Rutgers credit while attending classes in Atlantic City.
Most students are 30 to 45 years old and dropped out of college at least 10 years ago to work in the casino industry, said Program Director Ramendra Pandit, a veteran of the hotel industry who is called “Rummy” by his students and Rutgers colleagues alike.
“They decided, hey, I’m making money in the casinos — let me stay there and make more money. Now they start to realize that, if the company is looking at me, am I promotable?” Pandit said. The hospitality management program is geared to such students, he said. When Pandit tried offering day classes, the response was disappointing. When the resort industry is booming in the summer, attendance is down as well. “Our typical student gets off at 5 p.m. and comes to class,” Pandit said.
Jeff Jamieson works a 4 a.m.-to-noon shift as a casino shift manager at the Hilton, then attends classes from 5:30 until 8 p.m. “It’s a challenge,” he said. “But I would like to move up, and I think a degree would help me.”
Students admitted to the program have usually completed at least 45 credits toward a degree. Once enrolled, they must take core courses in marketing, financial accounting, hotel and lodging management, legal aspects, human resources, and food and beverage management. Electives cover such topics as engineering, maintenance and facilities management, gaming operations, bar and beverage operations, and club management.
Milton Leontiades, dean of the School of Business–Camden, said the program was started to meet the needs of Jersey shore residents and the growing hotel and resort industry based in Atlantic City. “A challenge was to develop a rigorous but separate program from the B.S. in management offered by the business school, with approval from its accrediting program,” Leontiades said. He said that the bachelor’s in hospitality management program has a separate mission, faculty and curriculum.
Last April, the business school published “The Future Impact of Gaming on Atlantic City 2003-2008.” While the report is cautious about factors that could dampen Atlantic City’s prospects — new state taxes and competition from other casinos in the Northeast — it was upbeat about the future expansion of the city’s resorts and non-gaming attractions. “In sum, the gaming industry will remain a positive and powerful engine of regional economic development,” Leontiades wrote in the report.
Before the hospitality management program made its debut, Rutgers found a good reception for M.B.A. classes in Atlantic City, and Leontiades said the bachelor’s degree program has even greater potential. “The hospitality industry has not reached an appreciation of an academic degree as much as others, but that will come as the industry matures,” he said.
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