Expanding the higher education experience: international summer school in tourism

Summer schools are a relatively recent form of higher education provision, especially in Italy. However, they shows interesting potentials both as integrative study to undergraduate, post-graduate and PhD students curricula as well as continuing education opportunities for professionals and for young researcher. Being short, intensive, focused and often located in heritage or tourist town or city, summer schools are often multipurpose and match education objectives with social and leisure ones. This paper, firstly, investigate the dimension of the phenomenon, providing elements on the historical evolution of the “summer school” concept in the world. Secondly, it provides an overview of the Summer School experiences carried out within the University of Bologna. Finally, the focus will be given to the experiences in the international summer schools in Geography of Tourism held at the Faculty of Economics in Rimini.