FOCUS USMMA
Retrain Long-term, systemic issues at Kings Point still need attention, report says. By Jerry Fraser, Correspondent
Enrollment at Kings Point is 79% white and 79% male, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
16
USMMA
W
hen President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y., in 1943, in the midst of World War II, he said, “This academy serves the Merchant Marine as West Point serves the Army and Annapolis serves the Navy.” He might easily have added, “and as the U.S. Merchant Marine serves our nation,” for it would be hard to overstate the Merchant Marine’s contribution to the war effort. To say nothing of its sacrifice. According to U.S. Merchant Marine figures, about 9,300 merchant mariners were killed during the war – about one in 26, the highest casualty rate of any service. Indeed, many Kings Point midshipmen served on vessels in combat zones, and 142 lost their lives. The young academy was tested by war, and it more than met the challenge. Enrollment rose to 2,700, more than two and half times its enrollment today, and the planned course of study was reduced from four years to two to ensure a supply of officers for the wartime merchant fleet. Nearly 80 years later, the global economy saw the U.S. supply chain move a record amount of goods and materials in 2021, much of it coming or going by ship, underscoring the importance of the U.S. merchant fleet. Nevertheless, what has emerged in recent times is a portrait of a school that, despite a reputation for stellar academics, has become somewhat beleaguered over the last decade or so. Indeed, a 2016 article in The Washington Post, the only major newspaper that reports on the school with any regularity, referred to USMMA as “a forgotten outpost on Long Island Sound.”
The description belies the school’s status as one of the five national service academies. And like West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, a congressional nomination is required of all Kings Point applicants. (The U.S. Coast Guard Academy, which is under the Department of Homeland Security, is the exception to this rule.) That status notwithstanding, more than a decade ago, in 2010, the Department of Transportation’s “Red Sky in the Morning Report” found severe deterioration among numerous buildings on the Kings Point campus. “The condition of USMMA’s physical plant has reached a tipping point,” the report stated, and warned that “current maintenance and capital funding are not sufficient to reverse this decline.” Failure to “aggressively invest” in upgrading, the report ominously intoned, “risks the eventual loss of the school’s accreditation.” And although its praises were sung
as recently as 2020 in the pages of U.S. News & World Report’s Best College Rankings, in November USMMA was taken to task in a report by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). Casting itself as a challenge to the academy, the report identified what it described as “long-standing issues that put the safety and health of the midshipmen and the entire USMMA community in peril,” and added, “The charge to address these changes is significant and will require meaningful leadership attention, strategic prioritization, and substantial resource commitments. The risk of inaction, the report concluded, “is immense.” Speaking on background via email, an academy spokesman called the NAPA report “a frank assessment.” Elaborating, he said, “The report makes clear that these are long-standing and systemic [issues], compounded
www.workboat.com • FEBRUARY 2022 • WorkBoat
