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The private sector initiative to set up a dedicated Maritime Academy is the first step in the right direction to place Cyprus on the international shipping map once again.
The fact that the University of Nicosia/Intercollege has joined forces with regional institutions, at a time when the eastern Mediterranean is becoming ever more popular to international trade traffic, also heralds a new era for the maritime education sector, that has been limping ever since past governments foolishly shut down the once-reputable marine engineering school at the HTI.
Since then, universities and colleges have developed individual courses, but these were designed merely to attract student enrolment and boost revenues, and not aimed at enhancing our shipping sector.
Instead of breeding engineers, captains and other professional seamen, with the Cyprus-based shipping industry begging for local hires, Cyprus followed the directionless path of manufacturing lawyers, accountants, teachers and doctors, with the aim of securing jobs in the services sector. Ironically, despite such as plethora of human resources, Cyprus is gradually losing its grip on the service sector and becoming uncompetitive.
Instead of looking at our short-term needs, we should have been investing in long-term wants, chief among them to support the sectors of energy, shipping and transport, where we will soon discover that there are no local talents.
There is no education strategy on this island, as opposed to other nations where industry and academics get together to determine the future direction of their schools and universities and develop new courses to meet the future needs of those economies.
If we want the maritime sector to boom in the future, then we need to invest in education. The same applies to other sectors where Cyprus has or can have a niche position.
But in order to do that, it is high time our state and private academics put aside their personal ambitions, rivalries and their bloated egos and work towards a concerted effort to create a unified platform whereby all universities, private or state, complement each other, but produce the “best of the best” in shipping.
The maritime sector is a global industry and the relevant schools can become world leaders. If only we want to.
