A floating university prepares for its maiden voyage
THE Oceanic II has been cruising the oceans under various guises for more than 40 years, but her next voyage will be her most unusual. From September 5th the liner will become home to about 200 undergraduate and postgraduate students participating in the maiden voyage of The Scholar Ship (groan), a seaborne university. The renamed ship has been refitted with lecture halls, seminar rooms and a library to transform it into a floating campus. Wireless technology has been installed, providing access to an on-board intranet housing course materials and lecture schedules.
Starting in Piraeus, near Athens, students will spend 16 weeks on board, being taught courses such as international business and conflict studies. Sea-bound classes will be complemented by onshore activities. The liner will stop off in Lisbon, Panama City, Auckland, Shanghai and other places en route to its final destination, Hong Kong. A second voyage, taking a new batch of students to Europe, will start in January.
Start-up capital and cruise-industry expertise have been provided by Royal Caribbean Cruises, but those hoping for roulette wheels and sequinned cabaret singers will be disappointed. Students must organise their own social activities. Academic credibility is bestowed by a consortium of international universities. At the end of the voyage Australia's Macquarie University will award successful students credits that can count towards a full degree elsewhere.
Enrolment is not cheap: the September voyage costs just under $20,000. Take-up has so far fallen well short of an initial forecast of 600 students. Yet kooky as it sounds, the idea of an ocean-going campus does fit into wider trends. One is internationalisation. Whether opening campuses abroad or organising exchange programmes, universities are keen to burnish their multicultural credentials. Another hot trend is “experiential” learning—getting students out of the classroom into different environments.
A cruise ship scores highly on both counts, claims Mike Bonner, the venture's chief operating officer. The students, drawn from 35 countries, will find it hard not to mix with people of other nationalities. And if the passenger numbers do not increase, there is an obvious money-making fallback. Having lots of young people who do not know each other trapped in a confined space is a perfect reality-TV format.
