Who are and where do Brazilian tourism graduates with a Ph.D. title work?

Abstract

This paper aims to understand and to describe the professional prole of Brazilian tourism graduates with a Ph.D. title, as secondary goal the study intend to identify the areas of expertise and the eld of work of these professionals. The research is based in a quantitative study, with a descriptive character, where data was selected through secondary database, namely Plataforma Lattes (ocial academic database from Brazilian Education Ministry) and validated through the Brazilian Tourism Research Network (REPETUR). It was identied 123 Brazilian tourism graduates with a Ph.D. title, they used to research in varied elds of study, specially: geography, business and communication. It can be highlighted University of São Paulo (USP) and Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) as the institutes of higher education which graduated more PhDs. In consonance, UFPR, USP and Federal University of Pernambuco are the universities that add more tourism graduates with a Ph.D. title to their sta. Still, results show that teaching is the main professional occupation for mostly of Brazilian tourism graduates with a Ph.D. title (89%), 2.1% holds position in public policies institutions or are independent workers/entrepreneurs (2.4%), and 4.8% do not declare any institutional position. Also, only 1.8% are exclusively researchers and from the ones who are professors, 20% are not currently engaged in research projects, which increase the gap in Brazilian tourism research. However, the medium rate of tourism graduates with a Ph.D. title in the last ten years (8 per year) and the increase of lato sensu courses in varied regions of Brazil, allow us to draw a positive panorama in Brazilian future research and higher education in tourism.