The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Bahamian businesses were yesterday urged to to offer more internships as a way of recruiting high school students, a move one academic believes could ultimately help curb this nation’s ‘brain drain’.

Dr Candice Deal, professor of accounting at Eastern Connecticut State University, addressing a press conference to announce the 25th annual Bahamas Business Outlook conference, also suggested that more emphasis needs to be placed on tertiary eduction in the Bahamas.

Dr Deal, who is scheduled to speak on the topic  of ‘Education Reform and the Skilled Labour Force in the Bahamas, said: “We need to invest more, and focus more, on education, specifically tertiary education. Learning does not stop when a child graduates from the 12th grade. Learning is a continuing process.”

Dr Deal said that over the next two decades the economy will become far more diverse, and Bahamians must be trained to meet the opportunities in various industries.

“I think that we must train our Bahamian people, especially our kids, starting from high school and going forward, so that the supply of labour in the Bahamian economy would actually match the demand for labou,” she added.

“I think what we need to focus on is what happens after students leave the 12th grade, after they leave high school. The thought process is that after the 12th grade, that’s it; you go into the job market and find something to sustain yourself.

“I think that the high school years are very important. That is the time when we need to cultivate the minds of the students. One of the things I would like to see more emphasis placed on is tertiary education. I think that students need to know there are options after the 12th grade.”

Dr Deal challenged the private sector to make more internship opportunities possible for students, so they would know the job opportunities that exist locally.

An Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) study released in 2014 noted that 61 per cent of tertiary-educated Bahamians had left this nation for jobs in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries.

According to the IDB study, ‘Is there a Caribbean Sclerosis’, which attempts to determine why economic growth in the Bahamas and five other regional nations has stagnated, almost two-thirds of college and university-educated Bahamians have moved abroad to seek jobs in developed countries, costing this nation a sum equivalent to 4.4 per cent of its annual gross domestic product (GDP).

“You have to make it possible for students as early as 10th and 11th grade. You have to make it possible for them to have internships,” said Dr Deal.

“You have to start recruiting from earlier on. Don’t wait until the student has received a scholarship to go abroad to school, leave and subsequently find a better opportunity elsewhere because they can’t find anything here.

“I do believe there are a lot of opportunities here, but I challenge businesses to make students aware that opportunities do exist.”