The Australian Geologist - Geological Society of Australia

FIGURE 1: Relationship between expenditure in mineral exploration and geoscience enrolments
at Australian universities since 1990 (Foden)
And now, more ominously, there is an increasing shortfall in
academic geoscientists in Australia’s universities, and that
shortfall jeopardises our ability to train the future geoscientists
the country requires.
Under the present government university funding model, he
says, low student numbers in the geosciences are causing the
downsizing and-or closure of geoscience departments, drastically
limiting the breadth of geoscience expertise available in
the university sector.
“So why should we be worried” Webb asks.
“Geoscience is fundamentally important to Australia’s
future. Geological resources drive a large percentage of the
nation’s economy. Sustainable development, encompassing
environmental protection, depends heavily on geoscience, and
geoscientists produce most of the data required to understand
climate change.”
“We must increase the numbers of geoscience students in
surviving geoscience programs, both to produce more graduates,
and to help those departments survive.”
“We must also encourage industry to support our universities.
With high commodities prices and record company profits,
there has never been a better time for industry to invest in
training their future.”
Having said that, the MTEC program has been a major
driver of substantial cultural and structural change at tertiary
institutions, and has influenced policy related to minerals
education. The submissions to the 2003 review indicated overwhelming
support from all sectors, including those outside the
MTEC network.
MTEC director Kevin Tuckwell says the main area of success
so far has been in minerals engineering,
with Earth sciences and metallurgy
next in line for new approaches
that will put in place ongoing
relationships between industry and
discipline areas on a national level.
In minerals engineering, the
collaboration between industry and
tertiary institutions has been such
that education in this sector is now off
and running under it’s own impetus –
a ‘spin off’ of the original MTEC model.
What remains now is to adapt the
model to other disciplines.
“The best developments have been
in mining engineering,” Tuckwell
explains, “so much so that there is
now a new entity, Mining Education
Australia, which no longer requires
MTEC to encourage the necessary
collaborations. They have their own
joint venture and formal agreements
for delivering education.”
“But the model doesn’t work in metallurgy or Earth science.
In engineering, the training is more vocational, whereas in the
other two, many graduates may not end up in the industry, so
we need to get each of the discipline areas to develop long-term
strategic plans for themselves,” he says.
Tuckwell says that in the near future, a review panel will be
identifying the skills needed in Earth science graduates for the
minerals industry. The review will be closely tied to the platforms
put forward in National Strategic Plan for the geosciences
– developed by the Australian Academy of Science’s National
Committee for Earth Sciences.
TAG December 2006 | 25