Research Project Details Project Title: Strategic Design of Future Maritime Education at Maritime Universities in Shipping Developed and Developing Countries Project summary: Economic growth causes a large difference in wage in the international shipping labor market and brings a resultant loss of international competitiveness to shipping companies. To respond to this situation, shipping companies urge the shifting of their fleets to a flag of convenience system, increasing the employment of foreign seafarers. The outcome is a stagnant demand of domestic seafarers. The anxiety is not only for the stagnant demand of fresh seafarers, but also for the shortage of experienced seafarers supporting maritime related industries. Japan has already been in such a situation, while it is just at the onset stage in the Republic of Korea. China and Turkey should have the same anxiety in the near future. Even if the number of graduates employed as seafarers reduces, human resources are indispensable to sustain maritime-related industries. However, society does not require merely career professionals to perform duties on ships at sea, rather, dynamic abilities to play an active role in shore-work supporting maritime related businesses as technologists by making use of their experience at sea. For the above purpose, the future of specialized education in maritime universities, with education to obtain seafarers’ certificates of competency at its core, is expected to premise on comprehensive and integrated education that produces technical experts in the maritime field. In this research project, under the joint efforts of Japan, Korea, China and Turkey, anticipating the future movement of the maritime society, (1) The requirement capability of maritime technologists and the framework of future education are redesign, showing the image to foster technical experts with both wings of ship operating skills in one wing and ability to apply theoretical and practical technology in other wing. (2) Reflecting its achievements in an action plan to enhance university staffs' teaching ability which covers from theoretical field to practical field, an idea of an inter-university international ‘model-class’ is proposed.
Model-class provides opportunities of sharing excellent educational techniques and know-how with other colleagues. Model-class is offered by a university according to their expertise for teaching staffs from other IAMU member universities to learn and absorb fresh ideas to teach. University staffs can obtain extensive knowledge and techniques for teaching by participating in prepared model-class by each university sequentially.
|