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WA university students graduating with mining industry qualifications exceeds the capacity of industry to provide work placements, leaving some unable to formally complete their qualifications.

2 November 2011

The issue has been brewing for several years as student numbers have been rising and is a major concern for industry body AusIMM, which represents mining and metallurgy professionals. “Our point to the industry is, we are now producing graduates who have never seen a mine site,” says AusIMMs Perth branch chairman, Chris Davis. The number of mining graduates, mainly in engineering and geology, has risen from 95 a decade ago to 255 last year and an estimated 452 this year. This growth had outstripped the increase in mine sites (up 49% to 215) and site-based employment (up 100% to 78,000). A large number of students are not obtaining vacation work in the first and second year of university and some not ever.

According to AusIMM WA produced approximately 100 mining industry graduates each year, for most of the past decade. The low point was 2004, when the state produced just 51 mining graduates; that was a flow-on from the dot com boom, when mining was considered a dying industry with poor prospects. It meant the industry suffered acute shortages of skilled labour as the mining boom mark took hold in 2006 and 2007. Students responded to those shortages and the increased salaries in the mining industry by enrolling in mining disciplines in larger numbers. As a result, the number of mining graduates will average about 450 a year in future.

There will be a dip in 2012, presumably as a result of enrolments falling sharply during the global financial crisis. The largest growth in student numbers has been at Curtin University’s WA School of Mines, and they are aiming to lift enrolments even higher. Professor Hall said he was preparing a funding application to the federal and state governments that would allow its Kalgoorlie campus to lift student numbers from 425 currently to 600. Professor Hall said Kalgoorlie students were usually able to obtain work placements during the year and therefore found it easier than Perth students who looked for placements during the summer vacation.
Excerpt from: WA Business News (www.wabusinessnews.com.au), 26 October 2011