Maritime studies and shipping bussines: a trend research on education programs

Abstract

The Schools of Maritime Engineering & Business of the Spanish Universities forms the future professionals of the Spanish Merchant Marine who will sail the seven seas transporting goods in all its various forms. This remains a very important profession however, the importance of these activities it is not usually well known by the rest of the society not directly involved with the maritime world. The professions have been evolving, and the maritime job is not an exception. The marine professionals had opened new gates to develop new activities in other di erent positions which traditionally were busy by others carriers, for example, shipping companies. However, training in this sense is lacking, nautical students in most of the cases are not trained and specialized in this regard. The idea of this research paper is to quantify and identify the needs for the training and propose a training plan according to current needs in this area. The methodology of this work, has consisted of comparative analysis based on the results obtained from di erent surveys. The first survey has been conducted in several schools of nautical and maritime studies, considering the di erent levels existent at training programs, perception from students in relation to major weaknesses and missing elements. The second survey focused on experts in shipping & maritime logistics considering their experience from the trainee students with the objective to identify the core skills that will be required from a professional point of view. The results of both surveys have been combined, performing a comparative analysis in order to define a curriculum model that should cover the academic and business abilities gaps identified during the study.