The government is working doubly hard to make sure that maritime students will have a ship to board once they graduate, Commission on Higher Education chairperson Prospero de Vera III said.

De Vera admitted that there is a shortage in ships that serve as training ground for maritime students, saying the lack of shipboard training is now being addressed by the government.

"We're still discussing the shipboard training because it's difficult to solve," De Vera told DAILY TRIBUNE in an interview over the weekend. "We're discussing it together with the shipping industry."

He said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has asked the shipping industry and the new ships sailing on to the Philippines to help solve the government in solving this problem.

"We don't have a resolution yet; we're still waiting for it. We want all maritime graduates to board a ship," De Vera said.

"I just inherited this problem. The shipboard problem has been around for a long time, so we're trying to solve that," he added.

De Vera said the CHEd has implemented the new curriculum for maritime education starting this academic year.

"We enhanced the curriculum for maritime education. We are now laying out the catch-up plan because we added more skills-based subjects," he said.

"To the new first-year students, they will all use the new curriculum. But the upper-level students will have to catch up because they're still using the old curriculum," De Vera added.

He said the Commission is also creating a better monitoring system to measure the outcomes of the country's maritime education on a year-to-year basis.

"We are creating such a monitoring tool," he said, adding that the European Union has pledged to give some funds for this.

De Vera also said that CHEd continues to evaluate and re-evaluate all the country's maritime schools to ensure they comply with international standards.

"If there are not compliant programs, we will close them," De Vera said.

"The technical panel will report to the commission en banc on their findings soon," he added.

De Vera also disclosed that 15 maritime programs were shut down last year for being non-compliant with the standards.

"I think there are still non-compliant maritime programs," he added.