News & Views item - July 2007

 

 

Deans of Science Once Again Try to Get the Government's and Opposition's Attention. (July 9, 2007)

    You've got to give the Australian Council of Deans of Science credit for persistence. As they say in the introduction in their preliminary version of Sustaining Science: University Science in the Twenty-First Century released this past Friday, they have "been concerned about aspects of the trends shown by science enrolments for at least the past decade" and have now released their third analysis.

In 75 pages, featuring 78 tables, Dr Dobson paints a picture of a progressive decline in Australian university student interest in studying mathematics and the enabling sciences. He concludes:

 

Sustaining Science has examined enrolments, course completions and student load in the period 2002 to 2005... By confining attention only to this short period, enrolments in Natural and Physical Sciences courses might seem to pose no cause for concern. In fact there was growth in those years... The major concern, however, ought to be with the longer term and with the patterns discernable over the past 15 – 20 years.

 

[A]bsolute decline in chemistry, physics and mathematics ought to ring alarm bells. The ‘steady as she goes’ pattern of 2002-5 hides the fact that the 1990s saw sharp declines in enabling sciences participation by students enrolled in courses in the Natural and Physical Sciences. The number of enrolments has roughly doubled since 1989, with some uncertainty due to the changes in counting methodology, yet during such spectacular growth in the system the number of equivalent full time science students taking chemistry declined by 315 or 5.3 per cent. For physics the decline was 701 (about 19 per cent).

 

Certainly there was strong growth in the biological sciences, with 7,976 equivalent full time students studying in 2005 compared with 1989. However, although a useful addition to Australia’s knowledge base, this ready and growing supply of biologically literate graduates will not help meet the current skills shortages for physical, chemical and mathematical scientists.

Almost exactly a year ago TFW wrote: "This week the current minister, Julie Bishop, released the official audit of Australia's scientific, engineering and technology skills. During its tenure in office the Coalition Government under the Prime Ministership of John Howard has under-resourced the maintenance and development of "Science, Engineering and Technology Skills" to the point that the audit by its department of education, science and training warns in its final report that Australia is likely to suffer a short-fall of as much as 35% in its estimated requirement of 55,000 additional scientific professionals -- that is of meeting its projected need for an extra 55,000 scientific professionals within six years. That comes to just over 19,000 individuals." Meanwhile the global competition for such professionals continues to increase while neither the Coalition government nor the major opposition appear to be capable of developing methods to allow Australia to mount a competitive advantage.