Wednesday, November 25, 2009
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COB head: Invest in human capital By STAFF WRITER ~ Guardian News Desk: Claiming that only 14 percent of 18-24 year-old Bahamians take advantage of tertiary education in the country, College of The Bahamas President Janyne Hodder recently told a group of bankers that the country must invest in human capital with the same enthusiasm it invests in its infrastructure. According to figures Hodder said are from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the wider Caribbean community and Latin America have a tertiary education participation rate of around 35 percent. The Bahamas' rate, said Hodder, is closer to less developed countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (5.6 percent) and in South and West Asia (11 percent). Hodder, who addressed the Association of International Banks and Trust Companies in The Bahamas (AIBT) on Wednesday at the Nassau Conference 2009, said that the only way for the country to meet its challenges is by having a well-educated population. "The challenges facing both the financial and tourism services sectors, the realities imposed by new economic partnerships and new agreements on the exchange of tax information; the challenge of global warming and the risks sea-level rise pose to the Bahamian environment; the challenge of poverty alleviation and crime reduction - none of these will be successfully addressed without well-educated people making smart and thoughtful choices," she said. "The sustainable development of The Bahamas depends on the availability of highly skilled human capital." Hodder said that, "the argument that university education is a remote and 'academic' good accessible only to an elite is an outdated argument." "It presumes that we have a large pool of jobs which can be filled by people with few skills but high salary expectations. This is not the world in which we live; nor is it the one our children will find," she said. She also said there are further challenges that face the country, such as "shaping a society equipped to compete in a global and integrated economy." "Building a population capable not only of adapting to constantly changing global experiences, but also able to share in the leadership in driving some of that change, means appreciating that education today is about learning how to learn," she said. "We build human capital by ensuring that we have a broad pool of skilled and educated men and women who can face the challenges of today, and also meet the challenges we have not yet even considered. Capital projects of a physical nature are seen as long-term projects which increase national competitiveness; so it is with human capital development." Hodder added that there is "simply no other investment that can do more for the future of The Bahamas than an investment in its people." "For years, The Bahamas has 'outsourced' higher education, accepting that many of its most talented citizens will leave the country to complete university studies, creating the very real risk that too many will not return," she said. "By providing high quality academic degrees here at home, degrees that are closely tied to the needs of this country, we can help ensure that The Bahamas enjoys the gifts of its most talented young - and not so young - people. We also keep Bahamian dollars at home and the college itself becomes an important source of economic activity."
Friday, November 20, 2009 |
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