Up to the present, the operational functions of a shipping company
usually consist of owning, marketing and sales, operations (ship arrangements and
schedules, navigation, cargo care), crewing, maintenance and repairing, but these
functions are each being divided into special items. Especially this division of the
functions is a common phenomena in both developed and developing countries. This means the
seafarers' occupation in shifting from the synthetic skill/knowledge to the specific
skill/knowledge.
The ship operators who have special skills in operation, maintenance
and rearing prefer to operate the ship with small crew of mixed manning. They will seek
shipyards offering cheap maintenance and repairing from a financial point of view.
If the financial view point is given priority, who will ensure to keep
the safety on board? Only a small number of highly specialized and experienced crew can
maintain the safety.
Above all, we propose the new kind of post graduate courses with
international cooperation as follows in Fig. 2.
Fig 2 Academic and Specialist Courses
4.3.1 Academic course
The course promotes the persons who gain higher academic knowledge of
MET, ship operations, maintenance and repairing engineering. They will contribute to the
field of education and research.
The basic concepts of this course are research and development of the
academic background of IMO rules and regulations.
So far, the academic background has been supported by OECD groups but
in the near future the activities of this group will be taken over by the group from
developing countries. Therefore, it is reasonable and rational to provide opportunities
for researching and education for mainly Asians in the Asian region. We do not intend
regional sectionalism because Europe and Africa have their own projects for upgrading the
MET and shipping industry.
