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MINERALS INDUSTRY EDUCATION AND TRAINING II

Introduction

The boom and bust cycle of the mining industry has trickle down effects
in tertiary education in terms of the ability of universities to consistently
provide high quality graduates with relevant skills. When the commodity
price surged in 2002 skills shortages in critical resource related professions
were reported and despite investment in skill development there was a
view from employers that not enough young people were graduating from
relevant education programs (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2012). At the time
this signalled positive growth for engineering disciplines catering to the
mining industry, however during the downturn cycles, most recently since
2012, graduates exiting from the discipline can find employment difficult
and this contributes to reduced enrolments in subsequent years. From
an AusIMM (Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy) members’
employment survey conducted in 2013, more than half of the graduates
exiting from disciplines related to mining and minerals were not confident
of finding employment (AusIMM, 2013). In the long term the concern is
not only how to sustain enrolment and graduate numbers but also to
provide the opportunity for students to acquire the professional skills that
they require to make them attractive to industry.

Maintaining and sustaining core competencies in the minerals discipline
is an ongoing challenge. There have been a number of recent papers on
this issue presented at international conferences (e.g. McCaffrey et al,
2014; Drinkwater and Napier-Munn, 2014) and there is general agreement
that one of the ways in which the deficit in foundation concepts can be
addressed is through workplace development. Drinkwater and Napier-
Munn (2014) presented data from a survey of industry professionals that
indicated that more than 90% of respondents undertook on average 30
days of training each year of which approximately 5 days was professional
short courses.

Munro and Tilyard (2009) indicated that there was a clear need to provide
graduate metallurgists with basic skills during their undergraduate
training. They articulated changes observed in the roles and capabilities
of metallurgists (including graduates) based on 40 years’ experience in

Innovative Practice in Mineral
182 Section 5
Processing Education