Navy College Program for Afloat College Education

The U.S. Navy has ships deployed around the globe, which brings with it the unique needs regarding delivering a quality college education to the sailors aboard on active duty. The purpose of this article is to outline the U.S. Navy’s distance learning programs for supporting sailors at sea.

The Naval Education and Training Command is responsible for the education and training of naval personal. Under their command is the Center for Personal and Professional development, which has the mission “to develop the Navy’s workforce by providing education and training opportunities that build personal, professional, and leadership competencies in support of mission readiness” (U.S. Navy, 2013c, para. 3). Offerings under the Center for Personal and Professional Development are broken into three categories: personal development, professional development, and voluntary education. Personal and professional development courses are delivered online via the Navy Knowledge Online portal or by CD-ROM as well as classroom format at established sites and via mobile training teams (U.S. Navy, 2013a) The different components to the voluntary education program is targeted to provide a different set of services to its respective customers (McLaughlin, 2010)