Businesses who responded to a survey organised by Bermuda College on the effectiveness of its courses reported many students had poor communication skills on completing their education.

The survey was arranged last year to gauge public and business opinion on the College, and to find out where improvements needed to be made.

College chairman Jan Spiering said many businesses said they wanted high quality students to come out of the College, and some companies felt the college did not understand the needs of the business community. However, he said many also criticised the communication skills of some of Bermuda's young people who left the College to enter the job market.

"A lot of the businesses who took part in the survey said they felt a lot of people coming out of the college did not have the communication skills their equivalent students had after going to college's overseas," said Mr. Spiering.

"We are talking about both verbal and writing - the whole communication skill.

"They did not think that graduates (from the college) interviewed as well as the people from (colleges) abroad. This is an area we are obviously going to have to look at."

Mr. Spiering said the comments were not entirely foolproof because they did not take into account that many students who completed their education overseas, started out at Bermuda College.

And he said the problem could be just down to maturity and confidence. Often, students who go to study overseas may grow in maturity and confidence at a faster rate than those students who remained at home.

And he said some students may choose not go to college overseas, but go to Bermuda College instead, purely because they did not feel mature enough to handle it at that time.

But he said as this year progressed, the College would look to improve students communication skills, using a number of methods.

He added: "The college is dedicated to achieving student success, and communication is part of that. We have no answer to this just yet - we have just heard the results from the business survey. There are many ways that we may be able to address this issue and it would be premature for me to say what will be the best course of action.

"It could be down to things like letter writing, role play interviews and the drafting to resumes. We need to rethink all of the things we do to try to ensure that we respond to our stakeholders and their needs.

"If they don't think our courses are relevant, then we want to find out what they believe will be relevant to Bermuda.

"Success in the long-term for me would be having a college that was constantly listening to the stakeholders and constantly adjusting itself to meet their needs. It will be success when that becomes the norm."