QUEZON CITY – More than 50 percent of the students of the top maritime school in the Philippines are from North and Central Luzon.
This was according to PMI Colleges president and chief executive officer Rizabel Cloma-Santos in a recent interview here.
PMI Colleges is a major contributor to the workforce of the world maritime industry, having over 11,000 students in its campuses in Manila, Quezon City and Tagbilaran, Bohol.
Santos said more than half of their students from the 1980s up to the present come from the provinces, with their Manila and QC branches hosting a significant number of students from Pampanga and Bulacan provinces.
“We opened a campus in Bohol to cater to students from the Visayas and Mindanao. The campuses in Metro Manila take care of students from Luzon,” Santos said. She stressed that PMI has faithfully adhered to the vision and mission of its founder to give quality and affordable education.
Based on the recent report of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) some 400,000 seafarers are deployed on Philippine ships while 330,424 are working on ships of foreign registry.
Overseas Filipino seafarers make up 30 percent of the world merchant marine fleet, said the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Citing Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas data, the CHED revealed that these seafarers have contributedto the country’s economy more than US$3 billion in foreign exchange earnings.
Of this amount, an approximate US$700 million were remitted by seafarers employed by European Union flagged vessels.
A former broadcast journalist and program host, Rizabel is the wife of Philippine Ambassador to Vietnam Jerril Santos, and the granddaughter of Admiral Tomas Cloma who founded in 1948 the Philippine Maritime Institute in Manila with only 54 students.
Cloma is acknowledged as the “Father of Maritime Education” in the Philippines.
“He was quite a character,” Santos says of her grandfather. “He was a lawyer from Panglao, Bohol who ventured into full-scale fishing without any prior experience and went on to put up PMI in a place behind the Manila Post Office in what was then Plaza Lawton.”
It was during that time that Cloma discovered a group of islands in the vicinity of Palawan which he named Freedomland.
He then named each of the islands in the cluster after his wife and children. Freedomland was later renamed Kalayaan and is now referred to as the Spratlys.
PMI is the largest private merchant marine institution and considered first among almost 100 maritime schools in the country.
Its graduates constantly land among the top 10 in government licensure exams for seafarers, making them highly attractive to manning agencies and shipping companies for employment here or abroad.
Recently, PMI received its Certificate of Recognition from Global Certification which indicates that PMI is ISO 9001:2008 compliant. The recognition covers PMI’s three campuses which were all pre-audited.
The school’s flagship courses are BS Marine Transportation (BSMT) and BS Marine Engineering (BSMarE) which consist of three years of academic programs and one to two years practicum on board a ship.
There is also Customs Administration (undergraduate and masteral degrees) and the one-year Seafarers Rating course. Tuition averages about P15,000 per semester.
“We want to make our fees affordable to families with average income,” Santos said, even as she emphasized that the school’s faculty and equipment are the best. There have been instances when poor but deserving students were given a study-now-pay-later plan.
“Our grandfather always pounded into our heads that poverty should not be allowed to get in the way of having a college education,” Santos said.
In 1995, at the age of 94, Cloma received the Legion of Honor award from then President Fidel Ramos and was conferred the honorary title of Admiral. He passed away the following year.
