Shadow Education Minister Grant Gibbons says Bermuda College needs to improve its perception among young people to address an alarming fall in enrolment figures.Dr Gibbons pointed to statistics showing just 295 full-time students enrolled at the College in fall last year, compared with 665 in 1991/92.Full-time hospitality students fell from 250 to 25 in that time, with technical education from 74 to 27, with Dr Gibbons arguing recently reported undersubscribing is just the tip of the iceberg.“I’m very concerned about the significant underutilisation of the college,” the One Bermuda Alliance MP told The Royal Gazette.“This maybe is a consequence of perceptions with students, but it’s pretty clear the college has lost a huge number of students over the last 20 years in terms of its enrolment and its capacity to lift Bermuda’s students.“I know Bermuda College is working very hard to try to address this, but it clearly has a serious perception problem with a lot of kids coming through both the private and public school systems.“Certainly Bermuda College needs to do some homework in addressing this perception and trying to do a better job of marketing itself as a serious institution.”Columbia University scientists have said in a report that many young black men say there’s no point enrolling at the College as they believe it won’t give them the education they need to get good jobs.Last month, restaurateur Walter Simmons revealed only one Bermudian enrolled for a waiting course, with other courses also said to be massively undersubscribed despite unemployment growing while vacancies remain in some fields.Dr Gibbons provided this newspaper with statistics from Parliamentary Responses showing a number of full-time courses had zero enrolled students in spring 2011, including wood technology, masonry, office administration and continuing care workers.Full-time courses attracting just one student each were electronics technology, plumbing, motor vehicles technology, electrical wiring, plumbing technology, business administration and web development.The fall-off in part-time students is even more severe, with 483 enrolling last fall compared with 2,800 in the fall of 1991.The College has said it is targeting black males as part of its strategic plan, and has launched a recruitment drive to attract and keep black males; recruitment of that group has steadily increased over the past five years.Dr Gibbons said: “Clearly there’s something that’s grossly amiss here. We just need to look at why it’s not being more effectively utilised.“I know that’s unfortunate because they just got their New England schools accreditation, but there’s obviously something here that’s not working in terms of how Bermuda College is positioning itself and coming across to many of these kids.“They simply do not see it as serious as they should.“That’s unfair because they’ve got good teachers and it provides real opportunity for at least a couple of years.“They need to develop a better understanding of why they have this perception and what they can do to address it. They certainly have a good product from what I can see.”But he said the root of the problem is that children aren’t being set on the right track at a very young age.“You have got to start much, much earlier so you don’t lose them before they get to that age,” he said. “They need to be better prepared when they get to school.”He said the school day should be expanded to allow for training in non-academic subjects from M1 level.“We have got to make an effort to keep some of these young males in school. By the time they are at CedarBridge or Berkeley, they are fed up with the formal school process.“I think there needs to be more coordination with alternative programmes like the adult education school where, if it’s clear these kids aren’t going to be able to last in the public school system, there are ways to facilitate their move into alternative areas.“The message really clearly is, if they drop out or don’t do anything, there’s no support outside the education system. Outside, they are simply back on the street, looking for less than ideal ways to make a living.”He added that many young men and women don’t understand what options are available to them when they leave school.“One of the reasons they end up at Bermuda College, for them, is that it’s a place to figure out what it is they really want to do next,” he said.“There needs to be much more of an effort being put into working with these kids all the way through senior secondary school, to try to get them started well in advance so they understand what’s involved in looking for jobs and the application process.“We don’t need them to end up finishing and discover they should have some of these things a long time ago.”Mincy Report co-author Monique Keyser recommends more counsellors in schools to help children deal with problems at home such as violence and drug or alcohol abuse which are spilling over into their education.The Shadow Minister said: “I’m not sure I would be an advocate of simply throwing counsellors at the public school system, but I do agree there’s no harm in trying to work in more counsellors.“We have got to start much earlier and build a relationship with some of these males at an earlier point than S3 or S4.“With single parent mother households, we have got to get the fathers back into the equation because of the extraordinary influence they have, particularly on male children.”Useful website: www.oba.bm