The president of Bermuda College yesterday announced new targets for student success on the Island - as well as staff morale.

Dr. Michael Orenduff, who took over at the helm of the college in July, said by this time next year he wanted to see the attrition rate of students improve by 15 percent. At the moment, the college loses about 50 percent of its students throughout the duration of their courses, but it hopes to reduce that number, so that 65 percent successfully see their classes through to the end.

Dr. Orenduff said the attrition rate was the primary improvement he wanted to make, but said targets were also going to be introduced during the coming weeks that would make the college more cost effective and would monitor staff morale.

And he said faculty and administration staff would be surveyed again before Christmas to see if contentment at the college had improved since the last survey earlier this year.

Dr. Orenduff said: "We are going to try to reduce the attrition rate by 15 percent within one year. The first thing we are going to do to achieve this is try to get students more involved in their own learning process.

"We have got a plan that went into effect this year where students are put into groups, of about 12 people, and the idea is that they get more of an awareness that we care about their progress and success. It creates a group support."

He said faculty members would also be a part of the groups, and the aim was for group members to encourage each other and apply peer pressure - with the idea that the group in its entirety should succeed.

But he said faculty staff were also looking at the curriculum to ensure that students were placed on courses best suited to them.

He said:"We are looking at what some other institutions are doing, in terms of content. We want to ensure that the challenges we set before our students are appropriate for the skill levels and maturation rate they are at when they get here."

But also on the agenda is making the college more cost effective by looking at the cost per student.

The college is going to set targets to reduce the cost of educating students, by altering their economies of scale. That may mean reducing the number of courses they have that attract only a very small group of people.

However, Dr. Orenduff promised standards would not alter, and hoped the choice of subjects would not either.

He added: "In some cases we would be able to eliminate small classes, but in some cases we will be able to combine them.

"It will create some difficulties, but we want to have a balance between, on the one hand, offering as much as we can so students have opportunities, but doing it at a cost that's within the guidelines that we think is reasonable.''

And thirdly, Dr. Orenduff said he wanted to ensure that morale among staff at the college improved, and so planned to question lecturers and support staff at the end of this term.

He added: "I think people are feeling good about the college and the direction. We are going to give the morale survey out again to see if it's gone up or down, or even stayed the same.