So, how do we counter the criticism of the Taxpayer’s Alliance that events related courses could be described as ‘non-courses’? Sometimes it feels like we are caught in the middle of what industry wants and what gives our courses academic credibility i.e. the ongoing vocational (professional) vs academic argument. Does it have to be this way? The aim of this article is to stimulate debate amongst the events community and to highlight some of the current developments in both Higher Education and ‘industry’ (i.e. Sector Skills) that might be relevant to us. To add to the discussion we bring in some initial findings from research that we are undertaking with event organisations as to which skills they think are the most important for managers of events
