Seafaring campus

Educational, cultural and fun, the Scholar Ship presents a new model for international education. The Scholar Ship is a semester-long academic program aboard a dedicated passenger ship that will traverse the globe on an itinerary that brings the world to its students. Although not entirely novel – similar initiatives SEA and Semester At Sea started decades ago – this is an appealing new version of the concept, with a particularly strong focus on multi-culturalism. A carefully developed itinerary aims to provide 600-700 students with a truly global perspective. The inaugural September-December 2007 journey will begin in Piraeus, Greece and take in five continents before ending in Kobe, Japan. (The January-April semester will travel in the opposite direction.) Costs for a semester, including tuition, living costs and voyage, are USD 19,950 for a standard cabin. Scholar Ship is partnering with Royal Caribbean and the United Nations University and is backed by a consortium of universities in Australia, China, Morocco, Mexico and Ghana. Talks are underway with US and UK universities. Academic credits will be awarded by Macquarie University in Sydney. Engaging multinational employers from the get-go, the organisation’s charter members include HSBC, IBM, InterContinental Hotels, KPMG and Microsoft. “The Scholar Ship’s academic program is designed to nurture the next generation of leaders by equipping them with the international network and multi-cultural outlook that are highly valued by employers today,” says the president of the Scholar Ship, Dr Joseph Olander. From an entrepreneurial point of view, the Scholar Ship presents a clever model that will enable educators to partner with existing cruise ship players.