Viewpoint-12 November 2003

 

 

The following conScience column is reprinted with permission from Australasian Science, November/December 2003.

 

Reckless Squandering of Talent Hurts the Knowledge Economy

 

The government must dramatically improve career paths for young scientists, says Snow Barlow*.

Prof. Snow Barlow - credit: Deakin UniversitySecuring realistic careers for scientists after graduation is the most challenging and unaddressed issue for Australiašs labour force in science, engineering and technology (SET). Currently, markets for jobs in universities and CSIRO are stagnant, forcing postdoctoral scientists into accepting a succession of contracts for only 1­2 years.

 

Chronic uncertainty regarding employment is devastating for scientists at an age when their peers in other fields are settling down on comfortable salaries, getting married, having children and buying a house.

 

This situation was poignantly demonstrated at October's Science Meets Parliament Day in Canberra. Two senators learned first-hand about this grim reality when they graciously allowed two young postdoctoral scientists to use their computers to download the list of grants released that day by the Australian Research Council (ARC). The senators were shocked to find themselves thrust into a grief-counselling role with the two unsuccessful applicants.

 

Bursting into tears in a senator's office registers somewhere between a personal setback and tragedy, but it sure makes a point to those responsible for science funding. (Only about one in five applicants to the ARC was successful.) It underlines Australia's reckless squandering of talented people who collectively hold the answers to our economic and environmental future.

 

One of the tearful scientists is unable to enter the housing market because bank managers remain unconvinced by 2-year contracts. The other is looking at a new city, a new job, and possibly a right-angle change of career ­ out of science.

 

A strong corps of creative, passionate and well-trained SET people is a key pillar of Backing Australiašs Ability, the government's innovation statement in 2001. Yet, the interim report of the government's follow-up Science Mapping task force could not hide the fact that, as other OECD nations move more strongly towards knowledge economies, the impact of Australian science is declining just when we needed a boost. We now face intense competition globally for intellectual resources in SET.

 

Prof Kwong Lee Dow's recent Review of Teaching and Teacher Education has highlighted a decrease in the number of students selecting a second science subject at high school, as well as an acknowledged shortage of teachers with science degrees.

 

While Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson's higher education reforms attempt to redress the shortage of teachers through special incentives, they do not address the effect of higher HECS fees on science teachers who will earn exactly the same as their colleagues of similar age and experience who teach other disciplines.

 

The Nelson reforms also present dilemmas for university science faculties. In the past decade more expensive science courses have fared poorly in increasingly cash-strapped universities where Vice-Chancellors have often preferred the more popular and lucrative business courses. The ability to increase income by raising HECS will help to lift the quality of science education, but higher HECS debts will deter students from enrolling in science.

 

The government's Federation Fellowships were launched to attract our best scientists home, but has evolved into a program seeking to stem the flow of our talent out of Australia as well. This year, the scheme did not even fill its quota of 25 Fellowships. Furthermore, some of the eight overseas scientists offered Fellowships are having reservations about accepting them (Australasian Science, October 2003, pp.14 -16).

 

The nation needs a dramatic review of its education development and retention of SET personnel if it is to become competitive in the knowledge economy. This must be a key component of the next phase of Backing Australia's Ability. The provision of career paths for highly trained postdoctoral scientists, in whom the nation has invested heavily, requires urgent attention. Otherwise, they may be lost to science at great personal cost to themselves and the nation.

 


*Professor Snow Barlow is Head of the University of Melbourne's School of Agriculture & Food Systems,  and President of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS).