The first two decades, 1980–2001 In 1979, the governments of Jamaica and
Norway formed a joint committee to examine the feasibility of opening a
merchant marine training school in Jamaica. In an agreement signed on 2 May 1980, the Norwegian government granted 9 million
Norwegian krone (3.1 million
Jamaican dollars) for the development of the maritime sector, specifically for maritime training. The purpose of the institute was to train officers for the Jamaican merchant marine, a small fleet of ships owned by the government. By 1983, the student population had grown to 26, with half engaged in nautical training and the other half in marine engineering. Only two students in the initial cohort were female. In 1985, the JMTI moved to Palisadoes Park, between the
Royal Jamaica Yacht Club and Gun Boat Beach. It had a student population of 64 in 1990, In the early 1990s, JMTI collaborated with the Human Employment and Resource Training Trust/National Training Agency (HEART/NTA) to provide training for ratings. It also began offering an expanded curriculum to parts of the maritime industry that were not seafarers, which it did in collaboration with the Pacific Maritime Training Institute, a campus of the
British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in Canada. In 2001, the act was amended to change the name to the
Caribbean Maritime Institute (CMI), a decision made to reflect the regional nature of the student body and the training.
Caribbean Maritime Institute, 2001–2017 Around the year 2000, the Institute began offering the Caribbean Diploma in Shipping Logistics as a distance-learning course to students from six Caribbean countries, through a collaboration with the
University of the West Indies (UWI) Distance Education Centre and the Caribbean Shipping Association. 26 of the original 31 cohort graduated. In 2005, the student population of CMI was 394. In 2008, the CMI planned to launch a
Master of Science degree in International Shipping Management and Logistics, in collaboration with the
Cyprus International Institute of Management. The Institute built up a number of international partnerships, for which it was praised by the
Governor-General.
Caribbean Maritime University, 2017 onwards In 2017, the CMI was renamed the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU). In 2019, the president, Fritz Pinnock, was arrested on corruption and fraud charges. He resigned in April 2022. Andrew Spencer was appointed as president to replace him, having most recently been deputy director of the Mona School of Business and Management at UWI. == Buildings and sites ==