Introduction

・The importance of Maritime Education lies primarily in its uniqueness as the gate-way towards an international career: where personnel can move back and forth from national waters to high-seas and vice versa. Within this career sea-going personnel from any nationality can work onboard merchant marine ships hoisting the flag of any other nationality.

・While education concerns itself with providing individuals with knowledge with the objective of developing their mental capabilities, training is defined as: the activities, that need to be performed in order to develop a certain skill to implement a given assignment through performing certain practical exercises and instructions; i.e. training is simply teaching skills to individuals. Within this view, a mixture or a combination of education and training is the most suitable and workable approach for sea personnel. This dual approach will efficiently enhance the qualifying of marine officers who acquire an adequate volume of both knowledge and skills.

・Marine Training Institutes worldwide are diverse as regards available facilities, labs, workshops, simulators and -of course- depth and subtlety of syllabuses and study courses. On another level, these institutes differ -as well- in issues related to admissions and placement requirements. Similarly, competency certification exams differ in both content and format from one country to another. While in some countries, the concerned governmental authority is totally in charge of examinations and certification of qualifications, other countries delegate (either totally or partially) their official authority to some marine training institutes in conducting qualifying examinations for sea personnel.

This obvious variation in the quality and examination approaches adopted by marine training institutes worldwide has consequently led to a great diversity in the performance quality of sea personnel.

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