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Universities in Bermuda

Bermuda College

South Road, Bermuda
Bermuda College is a community college in Paget Parish, Bermuda. It acts as they only post-secondary educational institution in Bermuda. The school has made available a range of academic, technical and professional courses in the Divisions of Applied Science & Technology, Business Administration & Hospitality, Liberal Arts, and the Centre for Professional and Career Education. The programs offered grant associate's degrees, certificates, or diplomas and professional designation as well as non-credit offerings for life-long learners. Bermuda College has approximately 1370 students with an... See full description.

Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS)

Ferry Reach, Bermuda
The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences was established in 1903 as the Bermuda Biological Station. The mission of the institute is to greatly contribute to the fields of ocean health, oceanography and marine science. This mission is accomplished through the provision of high quality educational experiences and cutting edge research opportunities. The educational options at BIOS include a PhD program, offered in partnership with Princeton University; Observational Oceanography at the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence; university-level summer courses, semester-long programs in collaboration with... See full description.

Universities in Bermuda by City:

Ferry ReachSouth Road

About universities in Bermuda

Bermuda is a small island in the Atlantic ocean, enjoying a warm climate that makes it popular with tourists, and its affluent economy has enabled it to develop an education system far superior to many of its poorer neighbors in the Caribbean. As one of the few remaining British dependencies in the Western Hemisphere, Bermuda’s 64,000 permanent residents have many advantages stemming from their close relations with the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, its small size, geographic isolation (Bermuda is over 700 miles from the nearest landmass) and heavily tourism-dependent economy have made the growth of domestic institutions of higher learning slow.

Bermuda has no four-year colleges or universities, and there are no accredited institutions of higher learning on the island that offer bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, or doctoral degrees. It has one post-secondary school, Bermuda College, which is a small public community college offering courses in fields relating to the Bermudian job market. Students at Bermuda College can get post-secondary certificates, diplomas, and the equivalent of associate’s degrees, in any of the school’s four divisions: Applied Science and Technology; Business Administration and Hospitality; Liberal Arts; and the Center for Professional and Career Education or CPCE. At 1366 students, the school is a decent size given the population of the island, but still not large enough to grow into a full-fledged university.

Bermuda College was founded in 1974 as a consortium of three colleges that had existed since the 1960s. These three schools, corresponding to the three main divisions of the colleges current structure (CPCE was founded later), had had moderate success in attracting students and delivering high-quality instruction; by banding together in a single university, they were able to combine resources. Today, Bermuda College has dozens of well-qualified faculty members as well as a growing library that includes rare books and records from Bermuda’s colonial history.

Since 2009, Bermuda has been part of the constituency of the University of the West Indies (UWI), meaning that Bermudian students are eligible to go there and can get discounts on tuition subsidized by the government of Bermuda. University of the West Indies is a much larger institution than Bermuda College and has a considerably wider range of programs, so many top graduates from Bermuda secondary schools opt to do their undergraduate studies at UWI instead of closer to home. While this is undoubtedly a benefit for those students, there are some who believe that it damages Bermuda College by sapping away the top candidates, thus slowing down its development into an independent degree-granting university. The long-term effects are unclear, but it is clear that Bermuda’s education system is trending in the right direction, and that it is one of the strongest among mid-Atlantic island nations.