Graduates miss out on skills

The number of Western Australian university students graduating with mining industry qualifications is set to jump this year to 450 but the rapid increase is bringing with it some problems.

The number of graduates seems to have outstripped the capacity of industry to provide work placements, leaving some students unable to formally complete their qualifications.

The issue has been brewing for several years, as student numbers have been rising, and is a major concern for industry body AusIMM, which represents mining and metallurgy professionals.

“The universities raise this problem every year,” AusIMM’s Perth branch chairman Chris Davis said.

“Our point to the industry is, we are now producing graduates who have never seen a mine site.”

The number of mining graduates, mainly in engineering and geology, has risen from 95 a decade ago to 255 last year and an estimated 452 this year (see graph).

Mr Davis said this growth had outstripped the increase in mine sites (up 49 per cent to 215) and site-based employment (up 100 per cent to 78,000).

“A large number of students are not obtaining vacation work in the first and second year of uni and some not ever,” he said.

This means the students cannot graduate until the following year, after they have been employed for three months.

The largest growth in student numbers has been at Curtin University’s WA School of Mines.

The University of WA and Murdoch University have also experienced growth in the number of students in disciplines like geology and metallurgy.

School of Mines director Steve Hall said the growth in student numbers was causing significant growing pains, especially at its Kalgoorlie campus.

“It’s a good problem to have, but it is a problem,” he said.

Professor Hall shares the concern over the ability of students to get vacation placements.

“The industry does a reasonable job; there is no doubt they could do better,” he said.

Data assembled by AusIMM show that for most of the past decade, WA produced approximately 100 mining industry graduates each year.

The low point was 2004, when the state produced just 51 mining graduates; that was a flow-on from the ‘dot com’ boom, when mining was considered a dying industry with poor prospects.

It meant the industry suffered acute shortages of skilled labour as the mining boom ‘mark I’ took hold in 2006 and 2007.

Students responded to those shortages, and the increased salaries in the mining industry, by enrolling in mining disciplines in larger numbers. As a result, the number of mining graduates will average about 450 a year in future.

There will be a dip in 2012, presumably as a result of enrolments falling sharply during the global financial crisis.

However, that is an exception to the new pattern and the School of Mines is aiming to lift enrolments even higher.

Professor Hall said he was preparing a funding application to the federal and state governments that would allow its Kalgoorlie campus to lift student numbers from 425 currently to 600.

This would include an improved capacity to train international students.

Professor Hall said Kalgoorlie students were usually able to obtain work placements during the year and therefore found it easier than Perth students, who looked for placements during the summer vacation.

He acknowledged the industry faced constraints, including workplace safety issues, and called for all parties to be more creative in finding solutions. This would include mining services companies, such as consultants and software developers, as well as miners and contractors, providing placements.

Mr Davis said the lack of site experience made it difficult for graduates to select the best work options.

“Should they work fly-in, fly-out or residential, open pit or underground, for a mining company or contractor, in the lab or the processing plant, from a camp or in field exploration?” he said.

“Or, why not just work for a consultancy in Perth, because they’ve never even seen a mine site anyway.”