While those of us who attended academies may get a bit of grief from time to time, it DOES certainly help when coming ashore. I also had the added advantage of being an engineer. That said, for many in your shoes, capnfab, you may want too look into marine surveying and warranty work. Having read many of your posts, I see that you have a decent command of the written language (pretty important in that kind of work), and the experience you bring would be helpful to a lot of surveying companies.
The shore jobs pay much less today than they did in the 80’s. Operating engineers at a 2700 psi steam electrical generation station in Maine made around 40k a year in 1981 when I graduated. A couple years ago I was called by HR from Nextra energy and the man told me they pay $25/hr and thought I would not work for 50k a year in today’s dollars for the same job. He was right as I laughed about the pay to him. I thanked him for his time and asked where he found people to work for those wages with a first class steam license.
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There’s always teaching, not that there’s much money in it, but academy professorships pay Ok, even if not great…
Starting professor with a masters I know got offered 32k at Maine in like 2000.
[QUOTE=Traitor Yankee;149141]Starting professor with a masters I know got offered 32k at Maine in like 2000.[/QUOTE]
Ouch. When I came ashore in 88 to work for ABS as a field surveyor, I started at 31K. I believe that they are making more than that now, but that also included a car and overtime on top of the base.
[QUOTE=Traitor Yankee;149141]Starting professor with a masters I know got offered 32k at Maine in like 2000.[/QUOTE]
The salaries at most of the academies are ridiculously low. They especially hate to pay experienced mariners who do not have advanced university degrees. They don’t mind paying their top money to someone with a PhD in Gender Studies, but they hate paying an unlimited master more than the janitors. I’ve never understood why the good teachers stay. I certainly understand why some of the duds keep hanging around. The only one that makes good money is the football coach. The academies are looking more and more like ordinary liberal arts colleges.
A couple years ago I viewed the list of what salaries were for captains and engineers at TMA ( public records ) Ranged between 50k to 77k. The ones who had been there longer seemed to make the higher end of that but there could have been other factors I don’t know about.
My mother in law (phd, jd, ms) makes half of what a nurse makes, teaching nursing. Funny shit huh? It’s not just academies.
So these Academy instructors, some of which make cadets life hell, make $35-40k, or about half of a greenhorn 3M salary?
That explains a lot.
Sleeping in my own bed for 365 nights with or without a hot or cold girl is the way to live! 28 years is long enough for me . I am also looking to go ashore. Facing the same thoughts !!
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[QUOTE=tugsailor;149144]The salaries at most of the academies are ridiculously low. They especially hate to pay experienced mariners who do not have advanced university degrees. They don’t mind paying their top money to someone with a PhD in Gender Studies, but they hate paying an unlimited master more than the janitors. I’ve never understood why the good teachers stay. I certainly understand why some of the duds keep hanging around. The only one that makes good money is the football coach. The academies are looking more and more like ordinary liberal arts colleges.[/QUOTE]
The brainiacs have taken the Maritime out of Maine and Mass Maritime Academies.The President of Maine Maritime is a townie (son of Babbliing Bill Brenann) with a PHD and never sailed a ship in his life. Deck or engine does not matter in my opinion and captains make good administrators as they have done that on a small scale sailing out where they are the law. The current president of Maine, was good guy in the eighties when I went to Maine Maritime, but went to a school without the discipline us cadets went through. His father was commandant of midshipmen and I hated the the prick.
I agree with tugsailor on the leeches sucking the salt out of the maritime schools by not paying people what they are worth and not what they ( Scum-sucking bottom feeding land lubbers) think we are worth. If none of us took these piece of shit jobs they would have to pay more!
The only maritime college that has not diversified outward from U/L licensing programs has been KP and that’s only because they are a special case, i.e., exclusively taxpayer funded ward of the state, under direct MarAd Control. It’s hard to imagine Maine, Mass, et al, having survived through the last 3 decades if they hadn’t broadened their student base. Colleges and grad schools are under intense financial pressure and we’ll be seeing more and more of them collapse under that weight. This is particularly true of small schools. My ex-wife tought at a small college in Virginia (Virginia Intermont College) that had to shut its doors last spring after 100+ years. This is not an imaginary threat. Yes, it sucks when USCG licensed instructors make peanuts when administrators seem to make cushy salaries and spending priorities seem completely unhinged from reality (I remember the football coach being the second highest paid employee at Maine, when I went there in the early 90’s). That said, it’s not realistic to think that maritime academies will ever start compensating deck / engine instructors at levels comparable to what bigger and wealthier schools would pay to management, engineering, law or science professors. The $ is not there and there is no pressure for them to do so. Maybe someone wanting to go ashore and teach would fare better at either one of the maritime union schools or a for-profit school offering USCG approved courses? Not sure what thes places are paying instructors, but maybe it’s better?
The student loan debt bubble is getting ready to burst (within the next few years), and bring on a new recession. Many colleges will be forced to close. Total student loan debt now exceeds total credit card debt. The default rate is huge. Schools have kept increasing tuition far beyond the rate of inflation. This is only possible because the government is paying the tuition with student loans. For profit schools have grown like crazy, and some are big money makers. This is only possible because student loans pay the tuition.
Our society encourages colleges to provide, and students to seek, a “liberal education.” The concept is that a college education has intrinsic value to students and to society, and that colleges are not supposed to be vocational schools. This worked fine when only 10% of the population went to college. Businesses were prepared to train scarce new college graduates for the job with the expectation that the student would stay with the company until retirement. Now we have too many students in too many colleges studying subjects that have no market value. We have a mobile society where few people stay in the same job for over five years. Most college graduates cannot find a job in their field, or if they can, the salary is so low (i.e. social work) it does not provide a living wage, plus cover student loan debt service. Law schools have flooded the job market with increasingly poor quality new graduates. The majority of new law school grads will never be able to find jobs that will pay off their student loans.
The maritime academies are one of the best returns on student investment because they are relatively cheap state colleges that require few student loans. They prepare students for high paying jobs that are actually available in the job market. As long as the student gets his license at the end, he can do well.
However, the academies are now being run by “liberal arts” faculty and administrators. These educators respect a liberal education, but have absolute disdain for vocational training. The single minded focus on advanced liberal arts degrees over experienced mariners for the teaching staff and administration is creating academies with fewer mariners. The pay is so low for teachers without advanced degrees that some academies have 100 ton captains teaching their unlimited license courses. The humanities courses are crowding out practical seamanship training. These administrators are also hedging their bets against the next downturn in maritime, by diversifying away from maritime training and bringing more ordinary liberal arts majors into new programs at the academy. These new liberal arts students at the academies are paying tuition with student loans.
The future remains bright for recent academy 3rd mates and 3rd engineers, but the future does not look so bright for the liberal arts students. Nor, does this look like a sustainable business model for the academies. Big changes are in the wind.
It’s not entirely an internal issue at the academies. Pressure to be an accredited school requires those liberal arts humanities classes to be thrown in. But I don’t disagree with anything else really.
They need an experienced master of CE, not a talking head “admiral” or phd. But that’s never going to change.
Regarding salaries at the maritime colleges and their programs.
SUNY Maritime has had a job opening posted for “Chief Engineer, TS Empire State” for going on one year. I assume they cannot find someone who will work for the salary offered. SUNY Maritime is a particular problem because the cost of living in, or near, New York City is absurd and the school pays poorly.
The state maritime colleges are all parts of larger state university systems. Those systems set pay schedules set at the state level, so it does not matter much what the school teaches. Higher education, in general, pays poorly. The payback for teachers is that, especially if they get tenure, they don’t spend that much time actually teaching classes and have about 4 months off per year.
SUNY Maritime opened its non license program years ago because they needed students badly. SUNY sends money to the schools based on number of students. That’s in addition to tuition revenue. With not many license students, revenue was not meeting costs. If the school was all license students, it’s unknown if they could attract as many bodies as they need to meet expenses. It’s also possible that, if they could attract 1800 license students, they would have too many for the summer sea term.
For those of you who say the maritime colleges should be run by people with a maritime industry background, forget it. Academia is a subset of the economy that is devoid of common sense. College administrators rise through the ranks of academia, learning from other academics, and the all get advanced degrees taught by academics. It’s an inbred system that refuses to deal with the real world. That is why the cost of college has gone through the roof, and the schools are still broke. Of course, if they hire people from the government sector, like admirals from the navy, you get a similar mentality, that of a government bureaucrat. That’s no better.
[QUOTE=tugsailor;149239]The student loan debt bubble is getting ready to burst (within the next few years), and bring on a new recession. Many colleges will be forced to close. Total student loan debt now exceeds total credit card debt. The default rate is huge. Schools have kept increasing tuition far beyond the rate of inflation. This is only possible because the government is paying the tuition with student loans. For profit schools have grown like crazy, and some are big money makers. This is only possible because student loans pay the tuition.[/QUOTE]
Yes, federally guaranteed student loans AND G.I. Educational Benefits. As far as scams go, this last one takes the prize: round-up wealthy investors to capitalize a for-profit “college”, lure in unsuspecting vets to sign over their GI bill $ to matriculate in an overpriced program that is ill-suited to their educational needs, fail to provide adequate support and services to said students, then allow them to fail-out and make room for the next batch of victims. When the school is no longer bringing in enough students to perpetuate the business model, the owners get to leverage-up the balance sheet, liquidate short-term assets, pay themselves off, then move along to their next business venture.
If you have family or friends who are transitioning out of the military and plan on using their GI Bill benefits to go back to school, it’s probably a good idea to talk to them about this. Maybe start the conversation by asking if the school they’re considering advertises diplomas that come with a free set of steak knives, tee-shirt, beer coozy, etc,…
[QUOTE=Heat Miser;149273]Yes, federally guaranteed student loans AND G.I. Educational Benefits. As far as scams go, this last one takes the prize: round-up wealthy investors to capitalize a for-profit “college”, lure in unsuspecting vets to sign over their GI bill $ to matriculate in an overpriced program that is ill-suited to their educational needs, fail to provide adequate support and services to said students, then allow them to fail-out and make room for the next batch of victims. [/QUOTE]
Non profit colleges are not better. At least the for profit schools tend to teach majors tailored to job skills. Most non profit colleges push liberal arts that have little, or no, bearing on job skills. Unless one goes to a taxpayer subsidized state school, the costs at the non profit liberal arts college can be far higher than the for profit ones.
Before they called themselves “colleges”, the for profits were called trade schools. If you were motivated, you could learn a valuable trade. You still can.
My thread has been hijacked. 
[QUOTE=Bayrunner;149282]My thread has been hijacked. :([/QUOTE]
Yeah, that happened because someone said that teaching at a maritime college was an option. Since you don’t seem to have degree, I doubt that would happen for you anyway.
As far as I could see, you did not mention your specific experience on tugs, or where you worked. Some experience, in any industry, is more transferrable than other experience. There can be more opportunities in one place versus another. On the other hand the place with more chances to change might be much more expensive to live in.
Maybe, if you provide some more info, some of these people could give you ideas.
Guilty… Sorry.