[QUOTE=PaddyWest2012;131878]I would still leave ours be. As you can see this whole discussion has just turned into the same old back-and-forth about academy VS. hawespipe that has probably been going on since the first maritime academy was founded (Massachusetts in the 1870’s maybe? Not sure, I’ll have to check). I agree that there needs to be some tweaking about the path between limited and unlimited licenses, and I started a thread to that effect a couple of years ago and had pretty much the same discussion we’re having now. But whatever tweaking needs to take place it is minor and I do not believe that the overall system is inherently flawed. I think we should keep our exams and published questions just the way they are, updating questions for correctness and relativity of course, but adjust the seatime requirements only very slightly so that the system makes more sense and is more beneficial to hard working mariners like ourselves.[/QUOTE]
Paddy, I wish you good luck with your upgrade plans. I don’t know you but just from reading your post you seem the kind of guy that I’d like to have on the crew.
But I think there is a problem with the testing scheme. The test was designed to screen out people at a certain level. And now, inadvertently and unintentionally that level has been lowered. People who the Coast Guard did not intend to pass the test can now pass the test. Again I understand that some people exceed the minimum.
Up-tread someone said that the bar has been lowered for both schools and hawsepipers alike and that’s true but the school path has the additional burden of having to get a degree. That requirement is going to screen out a lot of people.
There are always going be to people getting licenses who shouldn’t have them but now it’s possible for the license prep industry to really crank them out. These guys are taking jobs away from the more qualified. This is especially a problem for highly qualified hawepipers because companies that do hire haepipers (fewer and fewer) like to mix it up and have an unofficial hawepipe quota.