Ocean Newsletter

No.101 October 20, 2004

  • The training of personnel who will play a major role in China as a maritime nation in the 21st century Shang-Ping Xie
    Professor, International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii
  • Marine Affairs Education in the United Kingdom. Professor Howard S. J. Roe
    Director, Southampton Oceanography Centre
    Selected Papers No.7
  • Current situation and problems of marine and fisheries education in South Korea Sun-Ae Lee
    Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Miyazaki Municipal University

Marine Affairs Education in the United Kingdom.

Over 70% of the earth's surface is covered by the oceans, to an average depth of some 4,000m.; the oceans hold about 98% of our total water; they are essential to life; together with the atmosphere they control our weather and climate, they are the largest (and most poorly known) three-dimensional ecosystem on the planet, and they are a huge resource! These facts alone indicate the importance of the oceans, but if we add issues such as coastal zone management, environmental management, shipping, transport, energy, defence, fisheries, biodiversity and leisure we rapidly develop a rationale for the importance of marine affairs which touches every single one of us. Rational management requires understanding and knowledge, and the foundations for acquiring existing knowledge and developing new knowledge lies in our education systems.
In the UK the last review of marine education was carried out by the Government based Inter-Agency Committee on Marine Science and Technology in 1998. The IACMST report concluded that "education and training in marine science and technology are vitally important to the UK as a maritime nation, and seem likely to become increasingly so". Both sentiments are still true. The importance, and vitally, the public awareness of the importance of the oceans has grown through both formal channels e.g. the International Climate Change Panel, and informally through the newspapers and television programmes such as the "Blue Planet". The educational opportunities in higher education have increased - in 1998 a survey of the website of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) revealed some 32 institutions offering about 190 courses in marine related topics. A similar survey now shows 39 institutions with some 198 courses - both are underestimates because many courses will include marine issues without these being specified in their title, and some Universities and colleges are not in the UCAS system. But clearly there is a lot of opportunity, and a very diverse range of courses available at undergraduate level. This diversity is further illustrated by taking a single institution - the School of Ocean and Earth Science at SOC offers 19 undergraduate courses which break down into 95 units covering different skills and different disciplines - all these for an annual intake of about 170 students. The IACMST survey also noted the need for multi-disciplinary approaches - this is evident in all the courses noted above, and in common with UK higher education everywhere, student experience is broadened to include training in personal and transferable skills, e.g. computing and communications, as well as specialist training.
Higher education in the UK has an international dimension. Within Europe we have the European Commission programmes which cover research, infrastructure and education at both the under and post graduate levels. Marine students can benefit from exchange programmes such as SOCRATES and Marie Curie. Exchanges are also developed locally - at SOC for example we have postgraduate exchanges with institutions in the USA, and the Worldwide University Network is a consortium of institutions in the USA, the UK and China which develops joint undergraduate lectures and research programmes - again marine issues are well represented.
Opportunities for postgraduate education in marine affairs are as diverse as for undergraduates. Higher degrees can be taught or research based, or both; funding is typically via grants from Government funded Research Councils, from Industry, from both, or by scholarships or bursaries from institutions, learned societies or, of course, privately. Undergraduates have similarly varied funding sources available to offset the tuition fees.
The quality of the resultant teaching and qualification is maintained primarily by national procedures within the degree awarding institution. Recently a new approach to marine science education and training in the UK has been taken by the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST). IMarEST is an international professional body and learned society recently formed (in 2001) by the incorporation of marine scientists and technologists into the Institute of Marine Engineers which was established in 1889. As a result the professional accreditation of degree courses and training which existed for marine engineering is being expanded to cover marine science and technology - both nationally and internationally. Accreditation provides a recognised quality standard and upholds the professional status of these completing the appropriate courses.
Awareness of the sea starts much earlier than in higher education. There is very little formal marine teaching in schools - but there are many initiatives which take children out of their classrooms into institutes, universities or the work place and promote courses and projects to widen the children's education. Marine activities are involved in many of these. An example is the government sponsored Science Engineering Technology and Mathematical network (SET) that enables visits and projects to be made by schoolchildren at various host organisations. One such organisation is the University of Southampton and SOC, where we host numbers of visits, supervise "marine" projects and give talks to children during "Science Week" - typically in the spring. Another example is the British Association's Creativity in Science and Technology programme (CREST) sponsored by Universities, research councils and industry which is a project based scheme in which teams (or individuals) from schools develop ideas which are presented and judged at host institutions. Again marine science and engineering features in these projects and some of these are hosted at SOC. A different type of school programme is the "Classroom of the Sea" - which is sponsored by the European Commission and by the Natural Environment Research Council and is based at SOC. Here teachers are taken on research cruises, take part in the research, and send daily reports back to their schools via an interactive web site.
But education is not confined to schools, universities or formal learning. Key to the public recognition of the importance and interest of marine affairs is exposure to interesting, relevant and well produced talks, articles and programmes within the institutions and in the media. Again at SOC we run public lectures in the evenings on a whole range of topics - whales, coral reefs, climate change, and so on; we hold "hands on" days when children (and their parents) come and bundle specimens, rocks and fossils; we hold open days and open weeks - and we have a specific funded group of staff whose role is to inform the media and keep marine issues (and SOC!) in the public eye.
This is very much a personal view, based largely upon examples from my centre. But the issues are general within the UK - there are a lot of opportunities for students of all ages; there is recognition of the importance of public awareness and acceptance of the issues in marine affairs; and there is recognition of the benefits of national and international links with the developing concept of professional accreditation of marine scientists to go alongside the well established procedures for engineers.

Page Top