News & Views item - March  2005

Metal fitters Metal machinists Metal fabricators Welders Toolmakers

Sheet metal workers Motor mechanics Auto electricians Panel beaters Vehicle painters

Electricians Carpenters (Melbourne) Bricklayers (Melbourne) Plasterers (Melbourne) Plumbers

Hairdressers Furniture upholsterers Child-care workers Registered nurses

 

Meanwhile CSIRO today pointed to "A statistically significant shortage" releasing a statement by Dr David Mitchell,  who heads a group of bioinformaticians and statisticians at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences and Professor Peter Hall of ANU's Mathematical Sciences Institute.

 

Dr Mitchell points out that while "the biotechnology revolution is creating huge opportunities for statisticians; understanding the kind of data being generated in biotechnology today requires quite different types of statistical analyses from those used in biological sciences in the past." As a result there is a critical need for personnel trained using the appropriate analytical tools but those individuals are in critically short supply.

 

According to Professor Hall, "The main problem is the greatly reduced capacity of our schools and universities to train professionals in the mathematical and statistical sciences. For example, the number of mathematicians working in our universities today is almost 40% fewer than it was a decade ago."

During 2003, just over 3000 PhDs were awarded in Australia in the natural and physical sciences. Of these almost half were in the biological sciences while only 186 were in the mathematical and statistical sciences, and as Mitchell says, "Combined with the low number of people studying statistics, this has created both an enormous shortage of good statisticians to do the work, and a lack of critical mass in Australia to develop new technologies. The worst-case scenario is that Australia will fail to capitalise on opportunities in fields like drug discovery and novel diagnostics because we don’t have research statisticians to develop the new approaches to data analysis that are required."

 

Concurrently the shortage of personnel in all the enabling sciences continues to increase both in the field and in academe, our research infrastructure falls further behind that of our cohort nations, Australia's current account deficit grows inexorably, and all the while the government continuing in self-congratulatory mode that it is in budget surplus.

 

It's rather like the head of the household hording his assets while termites demolish the house from the foundations up.

 

There are critical skills shortages alright, and they are not just in the trades.