Full-time enrolment at Bermuda College has dropped to its second lowest point in the last five years — with tiny numbers of students now taking technical education and hospitality courses.

Figures released by the Ministry of Education reveal that there are just 262 full-time students at the publicly funded college — a number which Government hopes to significantly increase with the lure of free tuition from next month.

The highest enrolment of full-time students the college has seen since late 2003 is 360 in the autumn of 2004. A year ago, the numbers fell to 221 but rose to 289 by the end of 2007. The college captures student numbers on specific census dates twice a year.

Just 16 of the 262 students now enrolled are on technical education courses and only 20 are studying hospitality. That compares with workforce statistics from 2006 which show that non-Bermudians are overwhelmingly filling those kind of jobs.

There were more than 850 chefs and almost 600 waiters employed on the Island two years ago and almost 80 percent were foreigners.

And of the more than 2,200 workers with a trade — such as electricians, masons and carpenters — almost half were expatriates.

Shadow Education Minister Grant Gibbons, who asked parliamentary questions in order to obtain the enrolment figures, described the numbers as "just another deteriorating and abysmal story".

He said: "Quite frankly, what it's really saying is that the college is not performing at the capacity that it could in terms of the number of students it could educate.

"While I think we all understand that there are a lot of very capable and committed people at the college they are not really fulfilling their mandate of educating and training young Bermudians."

Dr. Gibbons said the college — which has a $20.3 million annual budget — was not providing the kind of training required to fill jobs on the Island in areas such as hotels and construction.

"When you think about the fact that Bermuda College is training 16 students (in technical education) it really is appalling in terms of the lost opportunity for young Bermudians," he said.

The Royal Gazette has previously reported that the National Training Board (NTB) is sending fewer and fewer of its apprentices to the college each year, preferring to enrol them in overseas institutions.

It was not possible to obtain the latest figures from the board yesterday but former NTB chairman Nalton Brangman said he believed there to be between 400 and 500 apprentices currently studying abroad.

"The NTB sends abroad more full-time students in technical education than the college has full time students," he said, adding that the college figures reflected Government's lack of connection to the technical workforce.

"That will be seen in the increase in work permits applications in this field over the last three to four years," said Mr. Brangman, who was chairman of the college in 2006.

"There is a serious problem here with the system of education where academics is not meeting the workforce need. Technical education has not been developed by policy to be an integral part of the education system in Bermuda."

Education Minister Randy Horton — who pledged at a public meeting in November 2006 to make "significant improvements" to technical education on the Island — did not respond to a request for comment on the falling college roll or the lack of students studying technical skills or hospitality.

The Ministry of Education figures show that there are 598 part-time students on credit courses and 159 on non-credit courses at the college. Of those, 59 are studying technical skills and seven are studying hospitality.

Evelyn James Barnett, the college's Director of Communications, said: "The college has nothing further to add to what was released in the House (of Assembly). We will report on the fall enrolment figures after census date as we did last year."