https://www.miningweekly.com

Tertiary institution’s mining student intake rockets

3rd May 2013

  

Font size: - +

The number of first-year mining students at the School of Mining Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), in Gauteng, has surpassed all expecta- tions in 2013, reaching record levels that will help solve the industry’s skill shortages.

Wits School of Mining Engineering head Professor Fred Cawood says the word is out that mining is a good career choice for a young person looking for a secure job after graduation.

In less than 15 years, the number of first-year students registering in the department has risen from 43 in 1999 to 302 at the beginning of this year.

There has been a particularly sudden jump since 2012, requiring that the first- year intake be split into two streams to keep class sizes manageable. The School of Mining Engineering is also hiring more staff to meet this increased demand.

Cawood says the school is pleased with the demand for its courses, despite the extra pressure that it places on its resources.

It is already putting extra effort into academic and other support for new students to give them the best possible chance of success.

Extra mathematics and physics classes being held on Saturdays have been one way of addressing the lack of academic preparedness for university.

“The outcomes-based education system simply does not prepare students well enough for engineering studies. “This is evidenced by the fact that their Grade 12 marks bear no relation to the marks that they get at university,” says Cawood.

The other main area of support is financial and logistical.

“Less than 30% of our students have a support system in Johannesburg; many of them have never even been in Gauteng before,” says Cawood.

“Many first-year students are the first in their families to ever go to university – and, as a result, are unsure about what is required when they arrive, and often there is inadequate provision for accommodation and meals.

“In other cases, students have been booked into suboptimal living arrangements, which are not conducive to learning. We have raised money from sources like the Department of Mineral Resources, State-owned power utility Eskom, consulting firm SRK Consulting, the London Metals Exchange, local explosives provider BME and the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM) to put students into a situation where they can focus on their studies,” notes Cawood.

The school aims to attract 150 new stu- dents into the degree course each year; this is generally augmented by up to 50 students who have not passed all their subjects and must repeat first year.

At postgraduate level, the Wits School of Mining Engineering has stabilised at a level of about 200 students each year. Entrance to the postgraduate programme is strictly controlled to develop and maintain a better match between available lecturing resources and students serviced.

“It is unfortunate that, in managing overall student growth, the postgraduate programme is negatively affected, resulting in the postgraduate programme shrinking from 340 students in 2010 to 191 postgraduates in 2013,” says Cawood.

“If we had the lecturing capacity, we could easily double the size of the programme. One of the reasons is our unsurpassed range of specialisations, which allows us to accept graduates from other disciplines and convert them into the specialists required by the mining industry,” he adds.

He explains that most engineering programmes will only take you into a postgradu- ate course if you have a first degree in that discipline. “We don’t work like that. We accept any first degree, provide them with a specialisation, and ‘convert’ them to what the mining sector needs. An example would be converting an economist to a mineral economist by adding the mining and mineral economic content.”

Another recent development is the school’s certificate-level studies, which are seeing very good growth with the two Level 6 certificate programmes in mine resource management and mine planning growing from 54 students in 2008 to 77 in 2013.

These courses are aimed at practitioner level and represent an important Wits Mining School initiative to address the shortage of skills at this level. These two-year, part-time certificate programmes are aimed specifically at practitioners to prepare them for either promotion or employment on mines.

“The learners must spend eight weeks having lectures at Wits over a period of two years. It is a practical qualification with various on-the-job assignments over the duration of the course. This is an area of critical skills shortages at this level, and we could probably attract many more students if we had the capacity to grow further,” says Cawood.

Although the labour-related disruptions in the mining industry prevented some students from fulfilling their vacation work requirements during 2012, he adds, there were no signs that these events dampened students’ perceptions of mining as an exciting sector with plenty of opportunities.

“We saw this in the demand for first-year seats in the programme, which was at an all-time high at the start of 2013,” highlights Cawood.

Meanwhile, Cawood adds that the disruption of vacation work will mean that several second- and third-year students will not be able to graduate at the end of 2013, despite the fact that they would have passed all their academic subjects; this is clearly a problem for industry and the university.

In a recent paper for the SAIMM, professors Cuthbert Musingwini, Huw Phillips and John Cruise of the Wits School of Mining Engineering highlight the benefits of stronger partnerships between univer- sities and industry in efforts to close the skills gap.

“It is important to bear in mind that it usually takes about ten years of training and development after graduating with a bachelor’s degree – a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Engineering – before mining graduates are appointed to their first substantive managerial position, when they start to make a full contribution to the mining company,” say the professors. “This timeframe dictates that the education and development of mining engineers (as opposed to ‘competitive poaching’) should be treated as a corporate strategic decision.”

Edited by Megan van Wyngaardt
Creamer Media Contributing Editor Online

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION