Lagging educational attainment levels are affecting Bermudians’ job prospects
Bermudians risk losing access to the top jobs if they continue to lag in higher education, Shadow Education Minister Grant Gibbons warned.The One Bermuda Alliance MP also reaffirmed his party’s promise to bring in a technical curriculum at the middle school level.Dr Gibbons said the latest figures showed 32 percent of 25- to 34-year-old Bermudians held college degrees in 2010 — versus 42 percent in the US.The average is 38 percent across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).“These are the young Bermudians who have come through our education system in the last five to ten years, and who represent the current and future workforce,” he said.Greater numbers of young locals are attaining degrees, he acknowledged.In 2000, 25 percent of islanders in the 25 to 34 range held degrees — up from 15 percent in 1991.But the increase “still isn’t keeping up with the growth in educational attainment in other countries”, Dr Gibbons charged.“The proportion of Bermudians having college degrees has become much more important over the last 15 to 20 years, as career opportunities, and the skills required in the workplace, have increasingly shifted toward jobs requiring college degrees.”If the Island continues to slip, he said, “we will continue to see too many high-paying, white collar jobs filled by 25- to 34-year-old non-Bermudians”.Census data showed that in 2010, 54 percent of non-Bermudians aged 25 to 35 held degrees.Dr Gibbons said today’s trade positions were also calling for more training and upgrades in skills.In light of that he called it “disturbing” that younger local workers had also slipped in technical training and Associates degrees.“This percentage dropped from 26 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2010,” he said.The decline helped explain why chefs, masons, carpenters and tradesmen had come from overseas to fill local positions over the past 15 years, Dr Gibbons claimed.He said the drop underscored his party’s reason to pledge “a fully integrated technical curriculum, starting at the middle school level”, if the OBA gained government.Overall, one quarter of Bermudians aged 25 to 64 held degrees in 2010, versus 42 percent in the US and 31 percent across the OECD.l Useful website: www.statistics.gov.bm.l Concern at gap between men and women with degrees, see Page 2
Younger Bermudian women are beating men when it comes to obtaining a university degree — with ominous implications for the futures of local males.The One Bermuda Alliance’s Grant Gibbons said the gap showed that key points in the 2009 Mincy Report still weren’t being taken seriously enough.In that study of race, education and earnings on the Island, Professor Ronald Mincy sounded the alarm that young black men in Bermuda were slipping behind.Prof Mincy observed: “Too many young black Bermudian men appear to be taking less than full advantage of the opportunities available to them.“Fewer black Bermudian men go to college while many young black Bermudian women do, often while working.”Overall, the latest Census data show the number of unqualified young men on the Island as more than triple that of young women — 16 percent to five percent.For residents overall, nearly half of women in the 25 to 34 category — 48 percent — had a degree, compared with 32 percent of men.But for Bermudian women aged 25 to 34, 39 percent held degrees, versus 23 percent of men.Dr Gibbons said the disparity “reinforces the findings of the 2009 Mincy Study, and makes it all the more important to get on with implementing its recommendations, as well as following through on the education reforms recommended by Professor Hopkins in 2007”.
