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Originally Posted by block30
Thanks! Do you know anything about Great Lakes ops? How much does your education cost in total, and what kind of courses do you take? Do you get credit if you are a deckhand or something like that previously? Thanks again...
I know very little about great lakes ops. I know they shutdown down during winter for a few months when the lakes freeze over. From what I understand it's a lot of bulk ore shipments and things like that.
At the current tuition prices, I am paying about 3.5 grand for instate tuition/fees per semester, my living costs balloon that amount to about 9 grand a semester. There are also two two-month school training cruises that I go on during the summers that are about 4 grand each. In total I am looking at just under 100 grand for the whole thing when I graduate.
It is a 4 year program but is sometimes doable in 3 years if you get a bunch of GE done at community college, I happened to have most of my GE done but I am not going to be able to get it done in three, i'm shooting for three and a half.
Having previous experience as a deckhand is helpful in some classes, but the school does not give you credit towards anything for it. Through our various hands on classes, working on the boat, 2 school summer training cruises and 1 internship cruise on an actual merchant vessel, we acquire the 360 days of seatime needed when we take our license exam in the middle of our senior year.
I am currently a freshman, I find the classes super interesting. So far i've had a class about linehandling, how to tie knots, and line splicing, a class about naval architecture, a class thats an overview of the industry, a naval history course, a hands on cargo operations class where we learn to use forklifts/cranes/rigging. A small craft operations class where we learn boat handling in small diesel boats,an industrial safety class, and that's just my first year so far.
I know there is a Great Lakes Maritime Academy that focuses on Great Lakes ops if you are really interested in that. From what I understand it's one of the more mellow academies.
At most of the seven state maritime academies we where uniforms whenever we have class and around campus until a certain time in the evening, it's really not a big deal though once you get used to it.