The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Technical and Vocational Institute’s (BTVI) president yesterday said he is focused on preparing students to exploit opportunities from foreign direct investment (FDI) projects.

Dr Robert Robertson told Tribune Business yesterday there will continue to be curriculum changes at BTVI to meet the workplace challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that he is continually shifting the institute towards more “career oriented, short courses”, so more persons can take advantage of what it has to offer.

“Things look pretty good with us,” he said. “Looks like we’ll be at record enrollment for Spring 2022. Lots of interest from students, both adult students and also dual enrollment high school students.”

The Government’s scholarship programme is available to any who meet the minimum criteria, Dr Robertson said. “Almost 75 percent to 80 percent of the students qualify for the scholarships,” he added.

“So what we have done is we have added different types of courses that are career-oriented and career ready. We have added short courses that are kind of stackable. So you can take a course, and then maybe go to work or come back, but the flexibility of short courses that are partly online is something that we’re seeing around the world. We’ve been adding those for probably two years now.”

The short course format is especially appropriate given the thousands of Bahamians who were either terminated or furloughed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and need to be upskilled to re-enter the workforce in another capacity.

Courses such as hospitality and tourism, which is City and Guilds certified, along with a digital literacy programme certified by CISCO, are being promoted heavily at BTVI for the upcoming Spring 2022 semester.

Dr Robertson said construction trade-related courses will be “booming” next year. “We’ve had conversations with a number of major construction companies looking to do multi-million dollar projects in 2022. And they’re telling us that they want to start hiring as early as March, April, for big projects,” he added.

“So what we’re going to do is really push this NCCER programme, which many of the construction companies look to as a global certification. It is based in the United States, but it’s a globally-recognised certification.

“It stands for National Centre for Construction, Education and Research, NCCER. So starting in January, we’re going to have about 1,000 students in the trades, taking the core first and then they take level one and then level two, and those are basically online with only a little bit of hands on, but in level three it becomes all hands on,” Dr Robertson said.

“So we want those people to be up to level three by April; May at the latest, and construction companies will then take them on board and provide them basically with an apprenticeship or an internship.”