Boasting a two-year college with standards equal to, or above those of top-notch North American schools, Bermuda has much to be thankful for.

According to the College's first CEO, Mansfield Brock, such a facility was exactly what its creators had in mind some 20 years ago -- an institution from which students could easily transfer to a four-year programme overseas, which offers a superior training ground, and which pushes its attendees to achieve academic excellence. "I think Bermuda has a lot to be proud of for a country this size,'' he said. "I think the young people here have an opportunity to get an education -- to receive technical training or business training or hotel training for jobs, without worrying whether their parents have the financial reserves to send them abroad. In two years they can have their Associates' Degree. And the Minister of Education has said that no deserving person, who completes their Associates' Degree, and is desirous and has the aptitude and ability to complete the degree, no Bermudian will be denied the opportunity to complete their education for lack of money. "It also gives me extremely great pleasure to see the opening of the technical building. The College now offers the whole gamut -- academic, technical, business training and the hotel. And it means we finally have an institution which can replace the old Technical Institute. So I can say the people of Bermuda really have a fantastic opportunity, and it starts with the College.'' When he was growing up, said Mr. Brock, unless one's parents could afford to send them abroad to school, or unless they were a recipient of one of two Government scholarships, education beyond high school was impossible. "Today marks the culmination of our dreams,'' he said. "We all owe a great deal of gratitude to Ernest Vesey and the (other founding members of the Bermuda College) Board and the (Education) Minister of the day, Gloria McPhee and her secretary who was then David Saul. The other person was Thaddeus Trott, without whom we would not have the land and all that is over there. They were the ones who had the vision. And they did an awful lot of work to make this dream come true. I'm very proud to be associated with the early development of the College.'' Three places existed before the College was born, said Mr. Brock -- the Sixth Form Centre, a post-secondary programme which involved two years' of `A-level' work, the Bermuda Technical Institute which offered technical instruction and which actually was an alternative to secondary school, and the Hotel College, which was also post-secondary. "The first person I ever heard talk of a Bermuda College was Dr. Stanley Ratteray, the first Minister of Education,'' he said. "I can recall him saying how we were going to have a college. After he left (that portfolio), Gloria McPhee took over and pursued the idea. Dr.

Saul got me into the College. My job was to bring all three under one administration and I got acceptance for the College at many of the colleges and universities abroad -- Cornell, Queens, McGill and so forth. A Canadian, Dr. Ross Ford, was brought to Bermuda by the Board as a consultant, in effect, to get me started on how to do that. He was responsible for developing all the community colleges in Canada as well as many in other parts of the world.

"Most Bermudians are not aware of the standards. They are extremely high compared with what you can get from the average university and college in North America. A student can now do two years at the hotel and finish at Cornell two years later. I don't know any other community this size with that capability. It's incredible. "The same can be said for the (actual buildings). I visited the College last week and had the opportunity to walk around and, quite frankly, was thrilled with the developments. They were exactly what we had in mind. And if you look at a model done in the late 70's by the architects, they look exactly as they were perceived back then. The only thing we didn't anticipate is that it would take so long.'' Curriculum, he added, was dictated by standards required for most of those universities and colleges in the United States which have been accredited by regulatory agencies. "They only accredit a foreign institute if it caters primarily to American students so the only way to make sure that Bermuda is accepted is to ensure that the standards set in Bermuda are at least equal, to those standards in their own freshman and sophomore years. To ensure that they are equal, we make them higher; the plan was to create an institution where the freshman and sophomore year programme is better than the freshman and sophomore years where we would send our students. "Bermudians should realise the quality of what we have here. I am very proud of the fact that my own son was one of the early students who were able to benefit from the development of the Bermuda College. He did one year and was accepted into his second year at Princeton University, an Ivy League school, where he did extremely well. And there are also other Bermudians who have done similarly well in other prestigious institutions in the US, Canada and the UK. We've sent them to the most prestigious schools in the US and Canada and we've been able to do so because we set those standards; because we had to be able to prove that we were better so that they would accept our students.'' PHOTO Mansfield Brock Early College proponent Stanley Ratteray Archie Hallett MINI SUPPLEMENT SUP