From the archives: University mining education (1959)
The following article is an abridged excerpt from a paper that originally appeared in the Proceedings of the AusIMM No 191, 1959. The full paper is available for members to download via the AusIMM Digital Library. Pictured above: University of Otago School of Mines. Image used under Creative Commons Licence by Benchill.
Mining education has received almost continuous discussion since its inception, and most people engaged in the mining industry and in mining education feel at some time the urge and necessity to express their views.
This paper is not a comprehensive survey of past and present practices and accepted principles, but a personal opinion of the form mining education should take at university level. It is expressed because of a dissatisfaction with the existing courses offered to students. It is hoped to provoke discussion and bring forth guidance to those engaged in mining education. After all, students spend four or five years at a university and it is desirable that the graduate should be something more than just those many years older at the end of their course.
Postgraduate employment
The first problem confronting the university should be to discover what the mining industry wants and expects of graduates. This must influence the university course and yet universities have done little to seek this information, and if suggestions have been offered by industry, universities appear to have made little use of them. University mining curricula are basically what they were 50, 100 and even 200 years ago. Whether this reflects the unchanging problems of mining, the wisdom of early professors, the conservatism of subsequent professors or inability to appreciate necessity for changes is debatable.
Unfortunately there is no uniformity in the type of employment offered to new graduates. Some mining companies offer graduates staff positions almost immediately, other companies and the National Coal Board in Great Britain have formal postgraduate training schemes lasting up to three years. With such lengthy training schemes it is doubtful if a degree in mining engineering serves any useful purpose; a degree in arts, science or commerce might be more appropriate. Obviously the curriculum of a mining degree cannot adequately prepare graduates for such a wide range of first appointments.
Accumulating experience is a continuing process throughout life and a condensed two or three years training with the assumption that one is then qualified has little merit. This does not preclude working for a few months as a miner, either immediately on graduation or at any time. This is useful experience of working conditions. However, as this work is often of a labouring type, its value in the training of a mining engineer should not be overestimated, and most universities require practical working experience for the degree. At Otago University students are required to perform 200 shifts during university vacations in a variety of mining operations.
With lengthy post-graduate training schemes or lengthy periods of work as a miner, graduates are upwards of 25 years of age before having the satisfaction of holding a responsible position. There is alleged to be a shortage of mining engineers in the world, and this delay in making use of the available potential is probably a contributory factor.
It also accounts for the side-tracking of young graduates into occupations ancillary to mining where their university training and qualifications enable them to hold staff positions almost immediately, eg surveying, geology, etc. New graduates should be employed in junior staff positions and university education should be directed towards that object.
This means that the university curriculum must be oriented, at least in part, to equipping the graduate for the problems they will encounter early in their career. There should be no difficulty in achieving this if the time spent at the university is devoted to subjects essential to the career of a mining engineer and not frittered away on fringe subjects. It is sometimes said that the benefits of a university education are only fully realised later in a graduate's career, but this is probably an attempt to justify an education which at present has little value early in a graduate's career.
Definition of a mining engineer
The term 'mining engineer' still has for some people the wide range it had in the past, when techniques and problems were less complicated. Judging by advertisements for positions vacant, it appears that a mining engineer may be employed as a prospector, economic and mine geologist, mine surveyor, sampler, mineral dressing engineer, fuel technologist, petroleum engineer, assayer, etc, or as a mining engineer. It is not possible for one to be competent or to receive technical education in such a variety of subjects if the subjects studied are to have some connection with, and be a preparation for, the branch of engineering to be entered.
Neither is it necessary for a mining engineer to receive a technical education adequate for all these occupations. Today the tendency is towards large mines, or large mining companies which can economically employ the appropriate specialists or consultants, and with modern air travel there should be even less necessity for a mining engineer to be a jack of all trades – the days of the general practitioner are over.
It has been suggested that an education in mining engineering has a greater transfer value than any other technical education, ie it is relatively easy for graduates in mining engineering to transfer to other branches of engineering. This may be so with present mining curricula, but it is more an indication of the relatively low level of technical ability required in day-to-day operations of most branches of engineering than a recommendation for the mining curricula. There may be a demand for a general engineering degree, embracing all branches of engineering at a comparatively low technical level, but there is no reason why it should be called a degree in mining engineering.
There is as much difference between a mineral dressing engineer, a mine surveyor and a mining engineer as there is between a civil, mechanical and electrical engineer. The wide latitude in the term mining engineer is often misunderstood, and is confusing to those entering the profession, and may partly account for low recruitment to universities.
A mining engineer is responsible for the continued delivery of ore to the treatment plant in the safest and most economic way. They may be employed as an executive in line management or as a technical expert or research worker on such specialised aspects as ventilation and environmental studies; breaking techniques, drilling and blasting; strata control; safety; planning; transport, etc. University education in mining engineering should enable the young mining engineer to follow any of these branches immediately on graduation and to transfer between these branches later in their career.
Teaching of mining subjects
Practical experience and the teaching of mining
It is often said that universities should give sound training in theory, and leave the practical training to the mines, but I have never been able to discover what constitutes the theory of mining. A lot of mining tuition is unfortunately mainly descriptive, and must remain so, although it should complement practical experience. If the student has no practical conception of the subject matter, much of the descriptive material is wasted; if they have some practical experience, much of it is superfluous.
The main problem is how to obtain the appropriate practical experience so that it complements university tuition. Much practical experience is of a labouring nature and whilst it provides an opportunity for the keen student to assimilate much valuable background knowledge, it has definite limitations. If the student is engaged in unaccustomed manual labour, they will have little opportunity or inclination for systematic further self-education and tutors will be workers and junior officials who may not be ideal.
The ideal solution would be for students to spend one term at a large production mine or mines under the guidance of a competent teacher. This would achieve more than many hours in the lecture room. Medical schools are associated with hospitals and law schools with the courts, and it is unfortunate that mining schools cannot be associated with mines. Some mining schools do have their own mine and this is better than nothing, but access to one or more producing mines would have many advantages for teaching.
In view of the practical and financial difficulties of establishing a teaching department at a mine, other methods of obtaining the appropriate practical experience must be sought.
Some mining schools stipulate several months or one year's practical experience before entering the university. Again this is of only limited value. The student will be fresh from school and on entering the university will (in New Zealand) embark on the intermediate year which contains no mining or professional subjects; and the student will usually want to earn money, which means that the mine manager will probably put them on labouring work.
There are various alternatives, but probably the best solution would be to spend one year at the university straight from school, passing the intermediate year of science subjects. This would be followed by a full year (in practice 15 months) of controlled practical experience at mines, working on production for wages but spending definite periods on different operations. The program would be worked out by mining school staff and the mine managers or training officers, who could be honorary lecturers of the university.
Once the pattern was established it should work smoothly and without too much administration work or expense. This continuous lengthy spell would also assist the student to decide whether mining was their true vocation; vacational experience with its novelty, shortness and contrast to academic work is not a sufficient testing period for the student to decide whether they wish to spend the rest of their life in mining. The subsequent tuition in mining at the university could then be remodelled with the lecturer knowing the practical experience of the class, and the lectures would become more discussion than description. Similarly the other subjects studied would be seen more in their true position in actual mining operations by the students.
Laboratory work
In science and engineering subjects there is a traditional pattern of university courses which includes laboratory work, and mining has followed that pattern. This has resulted in certain aspects of mining, which lend themselves to laboratory work, being overemphasized, eg lighting, gas analysis. Some mining schools have built up extensive laboratories for practical experiments on ventilation, strata control, etc; but apart from their research use, it is doubtful if they are an economic proposition for undergraduate work. Laboratory work should only be carried out where it is an essential complement to lectures and not just because it is traditional. There are few aspects of mining amenable to laboratory work which cannot be done better in an actual mine – a further advantage of having a mining school associated with a mine.
Lectures
Much of the lecturing on mining subjects is of a descriptive nature, and hardly seems appropriate to a university. There is a danger that the lectures may become a medium for passing on snippets of information and knowledge to students. I have some sympathy for this type of education, as it at least provides some initial basis for any subsequent work in the subject which may be required. However, there must be a limit to the number of snippets and they will never be exhaustive.
There are excellent textbooks on mining now available and it seems a wasteful duplication of effort for lecturers to prepare a different set of lecture notes, often it must be realised based on existing textbooks and other publications. Would it not be more in keeping with the spirit of a university to give no lectures in mining but to require students to read designated textbook(s), with the lecturer's role that of explaining to individual students any material in the book which they cannot understand and promoting periodic discussions on different sections of the textbooks? I have not tried this method but it would be an interesting experiment.
Many university courses start at the beginning of the year and continue to the end of the year, each lecture merely carrying on from where the last one finished. This is not conducive to maintaining strident interest; a better arrangement is to arrange the course on the unit lecture principle by which the whole subject is broken down into a series of self-contained topics which are completely covered in one or at the most two lectures. In this way something definite and complete is learnt.
Essay writing
Extensive use is made of essay writing at Otago University, both for reporting on vacational experience and as part of the second and third year professional mining subjects. This provides essential practice in preparing reports on particular topics; it also provides often much needed practice in writing clear and concise English. Formal instruction in English is not necessary, since by correcting essays both for technical matter and English presentation, a noticeable improvement is usually made by students during the course.
Discussion groups
An attempt to use discussion groups in place of lectures in the final year mining subject has not been entirely satisfactory. The method used was to select a mining topic and to require each student to come the following week prepared to talk for fifteen minutes on the aspect of the topic they had been given. In theory all students contribute to the general fund of knowledge and a free discussion of the whole topic takes place, in which the lecturer's role is merely that of a member of the group. Reasons for incomplete success include lack of sufficient 'free' time in the curriculum for students to search for and prepare their material, in some cases too few students to stimulate discussion, lack of enthusiasm on the part of students accustomed to lectures as the teaching medium, and in some cases students having insufficient experience to discuss the subject with confidence.
An improvement which might make the discussions more realistic and to which each student could contribute to the extent of their knowledge and practical experience, would be the case study method. Unfortunately in mining, it requires far too much description to build up an intelligible case.
Directed reading of selected papers and articles in recent and current transactions and periodicals is also part of the final year mining course at Otago University. This encourages students to keep up to date on mining practice and research in different parts of the world, and to examine critically published statements, claims and results. It also fills the gap for students between the most recently written textbooks and present developments.