...conducting innovative research for the Mining Industry!

The Centre for Environmental Research in Minerals, Metals, and Materials
The University of British Columbia
Department of Mining Engineering
6350 Stores Road, Vancouver,
V6T 1Z4, BC, Canada
Tel: (604) 822-6217 Fax: (604) 822-5599
Email: cerm3@mining.ubc.ca

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University Graduates in Mining and Process Engineering in a Global Context 

     - How Many Mining Engineering Programs does the Canadian Mining Industry need? 

John A. Meech,

Director of CERM3

Canada is unique in the world with respect to Mining Engineering education. While there has been a significant contraction in Mining Engineering programs at Australian, US, and European universities, over the past decade Mining Programs in Canada have actually expanded by one - the Lassonde Mining Program at the University of Toronto. This has taken place despite the closure of many old mines in Canada and the opening of only a few new ones. Canadian mining companies have become truly global in that they now operate over 350 mines in off-shore locations such as Peru, Chile, Australia, Zambia, Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, Tanzania, Turkey, Greece, and have even developed a significant position in the United States.

To service this development with new engineers, Canadian universities need to produce about 100 Bachelor of Science graduates each year in Mining and Mineral Processing. When hearing this number, some people believe that only about 5 Mining Engineering programs are necessary to achieve this level. Some people are suggesting some mining programs be merged for efficiency purposes and to avoid over-production. This position demonstrates a lack of understanding of how the Canadian university system works and how many students must enter these programs in order to produce 100 graduates per year.

Below is a diagram which depicts the flow of individuals into and out of the various components of the university-industry system. It is worthwhile to become familiar with the numbers in this diagram to appreciate how many Mining Schools are needed.

The annual flow of individuals (average over past decade) into and out 

of Mining and Mineral Process Engineering career paths.

Assumptions:

1. The industry requires on average 99 new bachelor of mining engineering graduates each year.

2. An average of 15% of Mining Engineering undergraduates go into post-graduate training (M.A.Sc., Ph.D., L.L.B., MBA, teaching, etc.)

3. 50% of the intake into Mining Engineering advanced degree programs comes from foreign countries.

4. Every 5 years, about 2 new professors join each Mining Engineering faculty.

5. Approximately 66% of foreign graduate students return to their home country.

6. Each year, an average of one undergraduate student per school enters as a mature student from industry.

7. On average, 15% of Bachelor graduates take positions in off-shore countries.

8. On average, approximately 15 % of Bachelor graduates take positions in jobs outside of the mining industry.

9. On average, approximately 30% of Graduate Program graduates take positions in jobs outside of mining.

10. The mining industry recruits 18 mining or processing engineers per year from off-shore into Canada.

11. The mining industry recruits 18 mining or processing engineers per year from other industries in Canada.

12. The industry loses 27 mining engineers per year to off-shore mining operations.

13. The industry loses 27 mining engineers per year to other Canadian industries.

14. To balance this model, the current retirement rate in the Canadian mining industry is estimated as 72 mining and processing engineers per year, while the current intake of students from high schools and colleges is 180 per year.

So, the model demonstrates that to produce sufficient mining engineers to service the Canadian Mining Industry, we require at least 9 programs each producing 20 graduates per year. As one might expect, these Mining Schools are distributed provincially to reflect the regional needs of our industry:

Table 1: Estimated 2001 Graduates by Canadian Mining School

Surviving in the University System

Another reality relates to how each program attempts to survive within the university system. A program needs a critical mass of professors and students. Competition for university resources is fierce and large departments such as Electrical and Computer Engineering are undergoing expansion that threatens Mining Engineering programs. To survive, a department requires a minimum of 10 Faculty members and about 100 undergraduate students. With Coop Programs and an average annual graduating class of 20 students, this works out to 100 undergraduate students in a typical department at any point in time:

These numbers are typical averages and may vary from program to program, from year to year within the same program, etc.

Quality-Quantity Relationship of Students Recruited

It would be prudent for companies in the Mining Industry to examine and understand the dynamics of people-creation in university programs and to realize that amalgamation of schools is unlikely to be successful at enhancing the continuous production of top-quality engineers. Experience indicates when a department increases its enrollment by actively recruiting from First Year and from the Colleges, the quality level of the recruited students has gone up. When departments have not been proactive, the intake has been of marginal academic quality in which the students have been forced into our programs because they  do not qualify for the program they prefer. Although most of these students have matured into high-quality engineers who have gone on to play important roles in industry, they often fail to acquire the intellectual skills needed to see the "Big Picture" and to innovate. Our industry requires innovation if it is to survive as a viable part of modern Canadian society. We need to be recruiting from the top if the industry wishes to maintain and increase the quality of its engineering workforce.

New skill sets are needed by Canadian Mining Engineers as Canada enters the 21st Century. These include knowledge about environmental issues, about sustainability, about dealing with people (employees, co-workers, bosses, aboriginals, community folk, NGOs, politicians, etc.), and about the economics of capital markets and marketing of commodities in a global context. Mining Engineering curricula are evolving into a much broader program than ever before. Mining Engineering has always been a broad programs tapping into courses in all of the Engineering disciplines and related science subjects like Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Earth Sciences. Nowadays an even wider broadening is taking place into Social Sciences, Management and Leadership Training, and Environmental Protection that includes Biological and High-Tech Instrumentation for automation, remote mining and monitoring.

To Close or Not to Close - Is That the Question?

Now is not the time to speak about closing Mining (or related) Programs. Now is the time to be proactive and recruit people into Mining Engineering who want to develop skills that can give them the flexibility to change job paths as necessary, to be able to react to the uncertainties the industry and society will experience in the near future. It must be recognized that Mining graduates are able to work in many other disciplines – management, finance, banking, accounting, law, medicine, design, operations, environmental protection, Research and Development, etc.

The Government of Canada has recently launched a program to Innovate Industry – to double the research contribution of Canada's GNP from 1.5 % to 3.0 % by the year 2010. This will improve Canada's position from 7th to 4th place among the G7 group of developed nations. By enhancing R&D efforts in Canadian Mining Engineering universities, the Mining Industry will find an effective way to participate fully in this effort, increase the quality and quantity of Mining graduates and help enhance the image of Mining within Canadian society.