THE EDITORIAL PAGE A crisis in mining education

There could be something of a crisis looming for mining companies looking to recruit professional and technical personnel for their future operations from Canada’s schools.

The past few years of poor economic performance for the industry, and the resultant shakeout as mining companies have worked hard (and mostly effectively) to trim their operations for improved productivity, has taken its toll of professionals — mining engineers and geologists, as well as other technical people.

The drive toward leaner operations, leading in effect to fewer people doing more work, coupled with improving commodity prices, looks now to be starting to pay off on the bottom line. But as the industry climbs its way back, the tough years of the early- and mid-80s have left their scars on the universities and technical schools across the country which turn out the mining engineers and technicians the industry will need on the upswing and on down the road. In a study on mining engineering education which will be published in the September issue of The Northern Miner Magazine, there are some disturbing facts about the declining enrolment in mining engineering and mining technology programs at schools across Canada.

The statistics are alarming enough for the study to generally conclude that when the industry begins to grow again, its expansion could be curtailed by a shortage of qualified people from these schools.

At the Haileybury School of Mines for instance, last year there were about 100 students in all years of the mining technology program. That figure in 1983 was 283. At the B.C. Institute of Technology, four new students enrolled last year, compared to 15-20 in previous good years.

The picture at the universities is not much different. At Queen’s for instance, which boasts Canada’s largest mining engineering program, there are from 20 to 25 graduates now, whereas in the late 1970s as many as 55 graduated each year.

At the University of British Columbia, the study says, it was common in the undergraduate mining and metallurgy program to have 28 graduates each year. Last year 20 graduated and the forecast for 1988 is a dismal nine.

Figures given for the U.S. appear even more a concern, given such facts as that the Colorado School of Mines now has only about 60 undergraduate and graduate students, compared to over 330 just a few years ago.

At least in the short term, the trend at the schools looks to pose a potentially serious problem for the industry. The Northern Miner Magazine study report will offer some suggestions on how to avoid this for the future, but one inescapable fact still remains. For the next few years, the mining industry is going to be short of good, professionally qualified young people. There will be or should be, a stronger demand for new graduates, as well as for experienced people. The difficulty will be in finding them.