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THE PLIGHT OF SCIENCE EDUCATION
22 August 2001

The Australian Academy of Science today expressed concern at the state of science education in Australia.

The President of the Academy, Professor Brian Anderson, said 'A strong education sector at all levels is vital to creating and sustaining a knowledge-based economy. We are seeing some very disturbing signs.'

'The declining share of enrolments in the enabling sciences of physics, chemistry and mathematics in universities and secondary schools is of great concern,' he said. 'We must reverse this trend. Otherwise Australia will not have the capacity to support the skilled workforce necessary to survive and prosper in an innovative and competitive global environment.'

Professor Anderson went on to say that even if we address the issue of enrolments in the enabling sciences, there remain policy issues that must also be addressed.

'The absence of a system that provides proper indexation to universities to reflect the community wide salary movements is a major concern', Professor Anderson said.

'A second policy issue is that the current arrangements that purport to reward quality do not in fact reward quality at all, but rather numbers. If university A produces four PhDs who get jobs driving taxis, it receives twice the funding that university B receives for producing two PhDs who go on to distinguished research careers.'

A third concern is that the price that universities receive for each trained student is dictated, and not arrived at by any process of arbitration or consultation.

These shortcomings in policy have resulted in increased stress loads on universities and caused our talented people to depart for overseas. This is the scientific equivalent of losing our Ian Thorpes and Grant Hacketts.

The future also looks bleak with the Department of Finance projecting that Commonwealth expenditure on higher education as a percentage of GDP will decline from 0.59% in 00/01 to 0.52% in 03/04.

The President went on to say 'Many departments in our universities are in crisis, and the crisis will continue to deepen unless these policy issues are addressed as a matter of urgency.'