Page 10: of Marine News Magazine (January 2014)

9 11

service, environmental cleanup, de- fense contractors, armed forces). That demographic could well be chang- ing in the very near future. Whereas previous generations of cadets slowly eschewed the life involving long trips – sometimes extending 4 to 6 months or more – at sea, brown water candi- dates tend to work in much shorter rotations, sometimes as little as two weeks at a time. Rapidly escalat- ing pay scales, pushed by a shortage of qualifi ed offi cers, is making the brown water sector an increasingly at- tractive choice for today’s graduates.

Comparisons of a shifting employ- ment picture: MMA’s gradual change in curriculum to meet industry de- mand, is telling. The shift from 2012 to 2013, for example shows that while fully 85 percent of 2012 gradu- ates who chose to go to sea did so in a blue water role, that number shrank drastically to just 51 percent for the class of 2013. That number is also refl ected in the whopping change in the number of graduates who chose

Military Sealift Command billets – primarily blue water service – in 2012 (63%) and 2013 (39%). Fi- nally, another key statistic shows that while almost 15 percent of the Class of 2012’s license-track graduates who went to sea, did so on foreign fl ag ves- sels, none of their colleagues from the class of 2013 chose that route. The seismic shift refl ects a robust U.S. fl ag demand for qualifi ed personnel – you guessed it – primarily in the brown water sectors. Not only are the cadets at Mass. Maritime returning to the water and the roots of this storied, oldest continuously operating mari- time academy in the nation – they are gravitating to brown water billets.

The indicators are obvious: “Go Brown, Young Man (& Woman), Go Brown.”

BY THE NUMBERS

January 2014 10 MN

MN JAN14 Layout 1-17.indd 10 12/20/2013 10:03:00 AM