News & Views item - March 2008

 

 

University to More Than Halve Its Number of Academic Mathematics and Statistics Teachers. (March 26, 2008)
Peter Hall
The president of the Australian Mathematical Society, Federation Fellow and Melbourne University professor Peter Hall, writing in today's Australian reports that when the Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Research and Science, Kim Carr, spoke last month at an Australian Academy of Science conference he told his audience when commenting on Australian skills shortages in science and technology: "In mathematics the problem has been particularly acute. Someone has called mathematics 'the language of the sciences', but it is also, in important ways, the language of business, economics, social policy and the trades. A nation that cannot turn out top-notch mathematicians and statisticians is a nation in deep trouble. Unless we turn around the trends that have bedevilled this discipline over the last decade or so -- in schools, in universities and in research -- we will not be able to meet our needs for people with a sound knowledge of mathematics that they can put to use across the economy and across all fields of knowledge."

 

In the same issue of the broadsheet Brendan O'Keefe writes: "Less than a year after the Howard government handed out about $25million to reverse the maths and statistics skills crisis... The University of Southern Queensland, as part of an institution-wide overhaul, has flagged cuts of four academic positions in computing, five in maths and three in statistics. According to a draft internal report on the overhaul, the positions are 'potentially no longer required. It is not anticipated that any of the proposed changes will contribute to significant changes in workload'."

 

In explanation Mr O'Keefe was informed that "USQ vice-chancellor Bill Lovegrove will announce on April 18 what cuts are needed as the university seeks to reduce the number of  courses it offers from 1592 to 751 and the number of degrees from 353 to 93."

 

 Julia Gillard - Credit Australian -
 Illustration: Igor Saktor

 Professor Hall notes that: "Ironically, USQ had been developing, in collaboration with education specialists, a special program for mathematics teacher training. This innovative program, which is on the scrap heap before it even started, would have offered courses on campus and at a distance to support in-service and pre-service teacher training across the nation," and he makes what ought to be an obvious point: "Australia's skills shortages in mathematics arise because we can't produce enough mathematics graduates, which means we can't train enough mathematics teachers for our schools, which means our schools can't produce enough students who can study mathematics at university. This perpetuates a downward spiral."

 

Quoting figures from the Howard Government's Department of Education, Science and Training: "The demand for trained mathematical scientists rose by 52 per cent in the eight years to 2004 and is forecast to grow by at least another 32 per cent in the next eight years."

 

Professor Hall makes the observation that while "Education Minister Julia Gillard has initiated another review of higher education, [r]epeatedly building new higher education ideas is a fascinating intellectual and ideological exercise, but of itself it does not move the nation forward."

 

Which is another way of saying that good intentions while necessary, aren't sufficient to make an "education revolution".