Edinburgh Napier University

  Europe has traditionally been the fulcrum of the world's maritime activity. In recent years, however, the maritime industry has experienced significant structural change, brought about by operational and technological developments that have led to a much wider geographical dispersion of maritime activity. Such developments include inter alia: the emergence of container shipping as the dominant market sector; the increasing standardisation of basic ship designs; the increasing specialisation of sophisticated ship designs serving niche maritime markets; increasing industrial concentration in container shipping and container handling sectors; and the continuous diversification of both these sectors into other parts of the supply chain. The net result has been that the traditional European domination of the industry has been challenged and usurped, largely by the Asian tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea and, most recently, China. These countries have fostered and developed the required specialised knowledge, especially in liner shipping operation, cargo handling and in shipbuilding and equipment production, which has traditionally been the preserve of the European maritime industry. All this implies that a rethinking of educational approaches for the maritime industry has been required for some considerable time, especially given the apparent incongruity of traditional educational provision for the sector being largely nationally based, while the sector itself is both inherently and increasingly globalised.