I don’t know about this issue but forgive if my intuition tells me that the underlying problem here is something linked to the Obama Administrations’ gay agenda for the military.
There’s ALSO a gravy train of 100s of millions of $$ for new training ships for the state-run schools - which will probably only get funded if the USMMA admin throws the federal Academy midshipmen OFF of their Sea Year service on commercial ships.
From KPS:
“The training ships used by the state maritime schools are aging and need to be replaced. SUNY’s ship is the oldest and will age-out in 2019. MARAD, which currently loans federally owned ships to the six state schools, wants Congress to bail out the states and fund new ships at a cost of $300 million each, or $1.8 billion dollars (before cost overruns) for six. MARAD and the state schools have been trying to get the bailout funding for at least three years; but, so far they have not persuaded Congress to fund the bailout. Consequently, MARAD’s unelected bureaucracy has set about to create a crisis so that Congress will be forced to do MARAD’s bidding and fund new training ships for the state schools.
One of the biggest hurdles the states must overcome to persuade Congress to fund these ships (in addition to the basic question, “Why should the federal government fund a major capital investment for six state schools?”) is that few cadets from those schools graduate with a merchant marine obligation and military commitment. Only state school cadets who receive a tuition stipend from the federal government incur such an obligation. MARAD annually budgets for only 75 students (from all six state schools combined) to take the tuition stipend; but, MARAD rarely comes close to filling those 75 slots. In 2010, for example, only 38 graduates took the stipend, of which 4 were SUNY graduates. $300 million for a new SUNY training ship is a lot of money to spend on four students per year.
In contrast, every one of the approximately 225 graduates from USMMA graduate with USCG licenses and a merchant marine obligation/military commitment (and it is a longer obligation/commitment than the one imposed upon the state school students who receive stipends.) Thus, from a cost perspective, it would be far less expensive – and faster – to expand enrollment at the Academy by 75 midshipmen instead of building six new – very expensive – state training ships, the first of which could not be launched before 2021 at the earliest.”