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CQl t^lese Merchant Marine midshipmen, a jJ aitlership is as wondrous as the New fyj Sey w to Navy neophytes. But many therCjtant Marine graduates are being denied sion lQnce practice their chosen profes- °f a couM result in the mass exodus
generation of trained maritime officers.
Te six maritime academies graduate about 750 men an women every year, virtually all of whom re- 'nstitufCe,Ve ^censes as Merchant Marine officers. These Kings p°nS are" t*ie Merchant Marine Academy at mies- rOI,nt’ ^'ew York, and the five state maritime acade- iV^fitim3 '^orn'a Maritime Academy at Vallejo, Maine Acade 6 ^ca^emy at Castine, Massachusetts Maritime Maritj111^ at ^uzzarcis Bay, State University of New York Acade''16 <“°**e8e at F°rt Schuyler, and Texas Maritime gra(juat ^ °* ^exas A & M University at Galveston. Most the j\[. eS,0^ ^ese academies also receive commissions in C°astReserve, and a few go to active duty in the
Perha^601 ^ears’ on^ a smaH fraction of these graduates, f°r S °ne ‘n five, has been able to secure the kind of job chant the education is designed: deck officer in Merer^ ar'ne vesse*s °f more than 1,000 gross tons or 4,ooq ?nnS officer in vessels with engines of more than orsepower. Why? Basically because of the economic stagnation of our merchant fleet, coupled with increased numbers of graduates from the maritime academies. This problem has been compounded in recent months because most of the alternative sources of seagoing employment, which in the past have been available during the low points of the feast-or-famine cycles of the maritime industry, have been drying up.
As a result, resentment and disaffection have been growing among graduates of the academies. They believe they have been victimized; they have invested four years in a technological education that, particularly for deck officers, has little transfer potential to other, more viable fields. They see little chance of getting third-mate or third-assistant engineer jobs, which would permit them to accumulate service toward advancement to the higher grades. The prospect of becoming masters or chief engineers is almost nonexistent. Bitter and disillusioned, many of these graduates are giving up on careers at sea and opting for training in other fields.
They are also increasingly hostile toward the military establishment, which they view as part of the problem. Some of this resentment is understandable, particularly by graduates of the state academies, where students, paying their own tuition, have spent four years in a quasi-military environment dominated by ex-military officers, only to emerge into a bleak employment market devoid of the job security that is characteristic of the military. Because of this resentment, graduates evade their responsibility to seek reserve commissions, or they let their commissions lapse as soon as possible.
Maritime academy midshipmen generally receive financial assistance from the federal government: a stipend for Kings Pointers and a partial subsidy for most state academy students. In signing up for either program, students
t0ceedi
juujiuh/O iv' piuivvi invivuum “wi *v ^
petitors with lower wage scales. One set consists ot ^ construction and operating differential subsidies under
■itime
in-
agree to seek a reserve commission and to accept one if offered. In 1979, responding to a report of the General Accounting Office, which criticized the federal role in maritime education because it lacked a clear purpose, Congress modified the relationship of the federal government to maritime academy students. The $1,200 annual grant to state students was changed to a loan. In addition, graduates are held accountable for six years of service under their reserve commissions, including five years of service as Merchant Marine officers in U. S.-flag ships, as employees in the maritime industry ashore, or as active duty officers in the armed forces or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The loan is forgiven for those students who discharge the obligation but becomes payable at a modest interest rate for those who do not.
The timing of this legislation was unfortunate, because it established the service obligation at a time when it was virtually impossible to fulfill through sea time, difficult to fulfill through shore positions in the industry since many attractive positions require previous sea time, and difficult to fulfill through active duty since there are limits on the number of state academy graduates who can be offered active duty. Thus, the military obligation has added to the frustrations of this generation of graduates.
If another Vietnam War or similar conflict requiring sealift capability erupted within a few years, we may be short of the higher grades of Merchant Marine officers
because of the missing generation of young officers w 0 never had the chance to get the sea time necessary t advancement.
How has the United States managed to lose possibly a generation of mariners? First, the U. S. Merchant Marin^ particularly the deepwater fleet, is a chronically depress^ industry, the only bright moments of which occur during periods of military buildup. The size of this fleet has bee static for a number of years; it includes about 570 snip measuring more than 1,000 gross tons. Military Pe0P ^ often deplore the sad state of our Merchant Marine, a cries for the revitalization of our “fourth arm of defense^ are common in the pages of the military press. Indeed, merchant fleet is an arm of defense, and in an all-out c°n flict such as World War II, it can be integrated well in total military planning. But, otherwise, the Merchant Ma fine is a sector of the transportation industry, not un * the railroads, dependent on the level of commercial ac ity. It is not a governmental entity; it is in the prlV sector and suffers all the problems associated with try* to turn a profit in a competitive world marketplace.
The federal government has provided two major sets subsidies to protect the merchant fleet from foreign c°
the
Merchant Marine Act of 1936. The other is the Jones ^ of 1920, which reserves a monopoly of domestic or m coastal trade for U. S.-flag ships. But even with the dit ential subsidies, several large U. S.-flag steamship c0 . panies have gone bankrupt in recent years, and even the protection of the Jones Act, U. S. intercoastal c0 merce has virtually disappeared. Thus far, administrati ^ have resisted the call for another form of subsidy C'd[^c preferences requiring that fixed percentages of import-’ carried in U. S. bottoms. Based on our experience with other subsidies, this alternative probably would not n made much difference had it been sanctioned. The U- maritime industry is sick, but so is the maritime indus throughout the world at the present time. And it will t more than patriotic pronouncements by the military eS lishment or quick fixes by governmental policymakers doctor it back to health.
Conceivably, the recurring sickness of the man industry should have made government avoid getting volved with maritime education and increasing the on r of trained officers. But apparently the opposite reaC had occurred. Government planners had viewed the p lem as a challenge, requiring better training progra1 This inevitably produced more officers. In the PaSt years, as the United States has retreated from the shipP>1. requirements of the Vietnam era, the state maritime a°a ^ mies, formerly small specialized technical sehoolS" limited enrollments, have been busily transforming 111 selves into bigger, more complex institutions. e
The academies cannot be blamed, however. Thev^^ pressured from within and without. In the early •" .
three of the five state maritime academies were n(,t accredited as higher education institutions; instead, functioned as technical institutions in the tradition o
frorn j*mts °P a multi-campus university and benefited °f tL e overall institutional accreditation.) As graduates Were ^ SC^00*S were displaced from seagoing jobs that ate sch^T^ UP’ lhey were discriminated against by gradu- mana °° s l^at did not want to admit them to programs in Ceivede;hlent °r cnS'necr*ng because the students had rarest ,eir locations from unaccredited colleges. As a Le„i j e academies were pressured to get accredited, in the °rS and State education agencies also joined
full aPPeal for these stepchild institutions to become
4rrted c°iieges-
came .. ne Pusb to improve the quality of the academies more e exPcctation that they be larger in order to operate si0n cost-effectively. As further justification for expan- Veys aCademy officials pointed to several manpower sur- 19705^de by the Maritime Administration during the cers j at Prec*'cted shortages of Merchant Marine office ac^111^ ^6 next decade. Because of this pressure, all Panded um'es were accrcdited by 1980. They all had ex- tumin > Udgets’ campuses, and curricula. They all were earlier~°Ut tw‘ce as many graduates as they did ten years
t^0 ln Ibe face of a demand that continued to shrink, gradu ^116 knows, of course, what the optimum number of the indu ft should be, but meeting the replacement needs of minati UStr^ *S a usefid starting point in making this deter- f°rce bl a 4°-year career, 2.5% of the officer work tireine °U^ need t0 replaced annually because of reWith unr and deaths. With 570 ships requiring officers cer bjii licenses and each ship averaging nine offi-
cauSe Q~ts’ each of which requires 1.8 people to fill (be- j°h on° Vacabons anci work rules requiring the rotation of The nu^°KtUnd'eS^’ officers are required annually,
that totM Cr <d °fficers needed for replacement is 2.5% of estirnat ’ °r ^ ^ ■ However, that figure may be a generous neededef because °f low turnover, only 1.5 people are to 192 tv, CaC^ b'bet’ fhe annual replacement total drops an acj.. . le academies graduate 750 officers a year, and '°nal 250 newly licensed officers come out of union schools or “up through the hawse pipe.” Thus, the size of the overproduction problem is apparent.
Although this surplus of graduates has been building toward crisis proportions since Vietnam, two factors have mitigated the problem. The first has been attrition. No one expects an academy graduate to stay at sea for 40 years; thus, when he or she comes ashore temporarily or permanently, his or her position opens for someone else. The second factor has been the existence of alternative marine-related careers that have absorbed large numbers of graduates when deepwater shipping-related job opportunities were particularly tight. But during the recent economic downturn in the United States, neither of these factors worked. When the economy is in a slump, turnover dries up, as the “haves” cling to jobs they would have once relinquished to the “have nots.” The overflow areas that once absorbed anyone who wanted to sail as a licensed officer—principally the Great Lakes and the offshore supply boat industry and, to a lesser degree, the fishing industry—had significant downturns of their own, reflecting the economic woes of the steel and automobile industries, the oil glut, and a price for fish that was too high for the housewife but too low for the fisherman.
Another significant outlet for young officers has been the Military Sealift Command (MSC) of the Navy. In the first couple of years of this decade, the MSC fleet had grown considerably, providing virtually the only opportunity for new graduates to sail on large deep-draft vessels. But by early 1983, the normal personnel turnover had disappeared, and MSC, too, experienced a stagnant employment situation.
Hence, this is how the U. S. Merchant Marine has ar-
rived where it is today—a serious imbalance between the number of officers looking for jobs and the actual number of positions available. And this is why we now run the risk of losing a generation of ship officers—those who may drop out of the profession permanently.
Before examining how to correct this situation, we should review the action taken recently by the Coast Guard, the licensing agency for Merchant Marine personnel. The Coast Guard has no direct responsibility for the proper supply of maritime manpower, but a 1980 legislation, P.L. 96-378, required that it facilitate career patterns for personnel in the offshore supply industry where high turnover of unlicensed personnel and overexpansion of the fleet had contributed to apparent shortages of mates and engineers. These shortages, however, turned out to be more perceived than real.
For reasons that are not clear, the Coast Guard broadened the statutory charge to include redesigning career pathways throughout the marine industry. It also proposed to develop a new license structure that would affect all mates and engineers. Much of the proposal makes sense, particularly the elimination of many specialized categories of limited licenses, such as those for coastwise vessels, uninspected vessels, and a great variety of inland waterway vessels. According to the proposal, a significant change in the regulations for deck officers would be the establishment of three categories of officer experience by tonnage level of a ship: below 200 tons, 200 to 1,600 tons, and unlimited—i.e., more than 1,600 tons. More important, for unlimited licenses, one-half of the required year of experience in each category could be on vessels in the 200- to 1,600-ton range. Also, certain time on simulators
could be accepted as sea time. Similar liberalizing ot1 e horsepower requirements for engineers was proposed.
Initially, this proposal appears to be a desirable an practical way of easing the difficulty that young mates an engineers encounter in getting jobs on deepwater vesse that will count toward the service needed to raise their licenses. It appears that by rotating opportunities, twice as many people could qualify for advancement from the sarne number of deepwater jobs. But there is one drawback- to setting the starting point of unlimited tonnage at 1.6 rather than 1,000—a move mandated, according to t Coast Guard, to conform to the classification system oi u^ international conventions established by the Internation' Maritime Organization, a technical agency of the Unit Nations—young officers cannot count service on l,0o to 1,600-ton vessels as unlimited service. Not only 1 such service creditable today, but many vessels cluster nj this range, perhaps as many as 40. These vessels, part MSC and what the Maritime Administration manpowe planners call the “peripheral fleet,” include tugs, salvage vessels, research vessels, dredges, freighters, tankers- coastal ferries, and offshore supply vessels. These are pre cisely the kinds of unlimited tonnage vessels that hay® provided the needed opportunities for service in the a sence of jobs on deep-draft vessels. To demote these veS^ sels and limit service on them to only half of the reqmre time may prove to be a step backward in the search t ways to assist officers in career advancement. .
These proposals are still undergoing review throug publication in the Federal Register and a period of Pub comment. Whether they survive in this form remains to seen. In the meantime, the Senate has not taken up 11 ratification of the International Maritime Organizati0 agreements.
i
What can each of the key entities involved in trainiflS maritime officers do for the upcoming graduates? 1 ^ states and their maritime academies can take a number actions. For instance, they can hold the line on enro ments at the academies and, if possible, divert some stu dents from the deck officer program into other curricu • They can explore the possibility of broadening the cumc
74
Proceedings / December
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A
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author
related enr°llment into nonlicensed but marine-
IVlariti pr°8rams’ similar to those developed by the Texas larger"16 ^cademy > in order to enjoy the efficiency of a °f shin"1 fftU^°n w't*10ut contributing further to a surplus amine th *CerS‘ ^ey c°uld also have the courage to reex- ^aderny6 CaSe ^°r t*1C St3te t0 *3e 0Perat'n8 a maritime
They6 academ'es should stress flexibility for graduates, the gr"0)" ^ modify curricula with the assumption that freight" "ate ma^ not ^ave a ciiance t0 serve on a large will m °r tan^er’ rather than assuming that he or she that th S° t^1C^ couici beef up placement services to ensure dustr, ° Personnel needs of all sectors of the maritime in- ^ are monitored.
the in J?raduates need to develop the same flexibility that rejectiS ltUt*°.ns sh°uld be trying to develop. Rather than Navai"l8 reserve commissions, they should use their liVen t CServe affiliation to acquire time on larger vessels, the CoW° Wee*cs a year °f shipboard training duty, which tight °aSt ^Uard can accept as licensed time, can help in a time empl°yment market. In two years, a month of such eould^h" accumulated. In today’s market, that time plerrie e Very helpful—doubly so if the Coast Guard im- serviCe S Provisi°n that only six months of required °Usly 6 need .^e on vessels of unlimited tonnage. Obvi- and a' h" act*ve duty tour could provide even more time c ance to raise the graduate’s license once or twice.
The •
^eman 1 "la',0r resP°nsibiIity for adjusting the supply- Sovern 1 balance lies with three agencies of the federal GuardITlent: the Maritime Administration, the Coast signif-’ and t*le Navy. Each of these agencies could effect
tJ, cant chanScs-
i p)e6 ^aritime Administration could: tem a useful maritime manpower information sys-
*'Censed 1C^- accurately reflects the number of billets for and wh' ?^'cers existing throughout the maritime industry each n.'C'1 8'ves the number of officers currently holding i p)e^aje8°ry of license.
t° ma V°P a c*ear an(i realistic policy of federal assistance to be lme education, recognizing the national interests erved, the costs and benefits of such assistance, and
the variables that work to prevent the policies from producing the desired results.
The Coast Guard could:
► Bring licensed Merchant Marine officers, including recent graduates, into the process of developing standards and procedures in licensing. Merchant Marine officers are probably the only group of licensed professionals whose standards are determined by regulators who, for the most part, are not licentiates in the profession.
► Develop, with the assistance of working Merchant Marine officers, a meaningful rationale for the various key requirements in licensure: the four grades of unlimited license, the extensive experience at each level, the differentiation by tonnage and horsepower, the content of examinations, the validity of the International Maritime Organization standards, etc. It could specify what duties licensed officers are expected to perform in various situations and what common competencies should exist among all licentiates in the same category.
Finally, the Navy could:
► Revitalize the Merchant Marine program of the Naval Reserve to reflect the need to use maritime academy graduates more flexibly in short periods of active duty.
► Use Naval Reserve officers with appropriate licenses extensively, even preferentially, in the Military Sealift Command. The provisions of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 included requiring merchant ships to use reserve officers in order to be eligible for subsidy. This requirement has never been enforced strictly. This concept should be applied to MSC. It might be possible to effect savings by using licensed reserve junior officers, ensigns through lieutenants, on temporary active duty to fill billets as third and second mates and engineers, in lieu of civil service mariners earning overtime. MSC has been a haven for retirees, but if it is truly an operating arm of the Navy, perhaps it should have policies with respect to training, career development, and even age-in-grade limits, similar to those of the active duty fleet.
Each of these agencies would benefit by mitigating the problem of officer unemployment. Although the best solution to the problem would be for the U. S. Merchant Marine to show significant growth, such a change is unlikely. Therefore, the problem must be approached incrementally rather than totally.
Yet, there is some hope. Today, mariners will work for less money than they once expected, fuel costs are down, and ships are available for purchase or lease at bargain prices. All of these add up to an entrepreneur’s dream. Is it too much to hope that, while the individual actions listed above are being taken, old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity can be devising new ways for U. S. ships to turn a profit for their owners?
Commander Grover received a BS degree from the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1945. He holds a chief mate’s license and periodically sails for the Army Corps of Engineers. He received a PhD in speech communications from the University of Oregon and has been employed as a university professor and higher education administrator most his life. Commander Grover is the former dean of the California Maritime Academy and will soon retire from his current position as postsecondary education specialist for the state of California.
Pr°c<*din