Calling it "the big missing link", the head of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) said it is "incumbent" on the organization to find ways to move ahead with the creation of a new educational institution aimed at addressing the "crisis" represented by the country's growing skills gap.
Robert Myers, chairman of the BCCEC, said he views it as critical that the chamber helps to contribute to making some of the 55 percent or more of the adult population, which he says data suggests is "unfit for corporate employment that requires good skills and continued job training" more productive.
Seeking to turn things around, Myers pointed to a new proposed initiative - the "Chamber Campus" - which is currently in the conceptual phase.
The private sector advocacy organization is currently looking for funding to design the administrative, operational and physical aspects of the campus concept. From the completion of that phase it would drive a feasibility study, business plan and determine investment opportunities.
Myers said that this, in conjunction with changes to the country's immigration policy, is what is urgently needed to begin to turn around the country's growth prospects.
In particular, the chairman said a more relaxed immigration policy, which would reduce the high cost to businesses of accessing skilled middle and upper management-level employees where they do not exist, while encouraging the entrance of new job creators into the economy, is key.
At the same time, the
chairman suggested the government must do more to implement successful strategies to deter the growth of the numbers of low-skilled workers in the economy.
Establishing the Chamber Campus is about creating "practical applications that allow business to grow and GDP to improve". The chairman said he would like to see the campus be "as big as we can afford".
"The idea is to create more cohesion between business and education by creating a campus with the Chamber of Commerce at the center of it and meeting rooms that are flexible for teaching or meetings. It's a vocational institute that feeds in from the high schools.
"The theory is you have STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs from high schools that then feed into work force or vocational training and certification and incubators, and those guys can either go work in jobs in whatever industries we're pushing or in an incubator with business mentors to help them get moving. It's a concept of investing in the workforce," said Myers.
In a letter to stakeholders, Myers recently wrote that with 3,300 persons entering the job market each year who are semi-literate and numerate, employers are faced with the problem of "not being able to obtain or provide normal levels of upward mobility" to their employees.
This is "seriously hindering and limiting the normal growth and development of businesses" and contributing to an education and wealth gap that is causing "serious breakdowns in society", as evidenced by rising crime.
In an interview with Guardian Business, the chairman called the Chamber Campus "the big missing link" in this regard.
"We're hearing we've got to get GDP growth up, but there's no plan for GDP growth. We've got to grow the economy and the only way we can do that is to improve the work force, to make our people more productive."
Myers commented on the project as data provided by the Department of Statistics in its Socio-Economic Report 2008-2012 revealed the severity of the gender gap in education in The Bahamas.
According to the department, over the five year period between 2007/2008 and 2011/2012, roughly 300 percent more females (1,749 persons) than males (439 persons) graduated in total from the college.
On average, 437 students graduated from the college each year.
Myers said this huge disparity between male and female graduation rates is particularly troublesome, given that while it is seen on a global level that females tend to do better in school than men, this gap often narrows at the college level.
"That clearly doesn't seem to be the case here. I think it's a disturbing number, and there's clearly some work on the part of social services and the government to figure out what's going wrong. It needs to change."
Meanwhile, of those who are studying at the tertiary level abroad, data recently released by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has shown that over 60 percent of them remain abroad.
Myers said he has recently sought to drive home the seriousness of the crisis facing the country in an internal report. Of the 6,000 leaving school each year, only around 1,600 on average are "capable of entering higher education or employment" while the remainder, according to educational data on exam grades, are "semi-literate or numerate".
"Even more disturbing to me and the Chamber Institute and why we say this is a crisis is because you've got an educational gap which is creating a wealth gap and instability and hampering GDP growth. So you've got more than a 2:1 ratio when it comes to those able to move into higher education or middle management or higher income employment than those that are not."
Myers said it is incumbent upon the chamber and supporters not to "allow the status quo to continue to erode the economy".
"The beauty is you've got this interconnection between business, education and industry. The idea is if the private sector is telling the pedagogy what kind of people they want and they design programs around that, there's almost an automatic employment effect," said Myers.
Asked how the Chamber Institution would fit with already existing institutions, such as the Bahamas Technical Vocational Institute, Myers said that given the current levels of appropriately skilled people in the economy, BTVI appears to be "barely scratching the surface" with respect to providing the necessary training.
"You've got a backlog of 30 years of under-educated people. You've got tens of thousands of people who need to learn to become productive; the system has failed them and there's no capacity."

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