Engineering & Education
The Fate of Mining Engineering Education
Since tragedy struck the Sago mine earlier this week in Tallmansville, West Virginia, many wonder how to prevent an event like this from happening again. One solution to this problem lies in raising the number of experienced people who enter the field of mining engineering each year to supply the resurging industry with the kind of workforce it needs.
During the 1970s oil embargo, concern over U.S. dependence on imported energy sources prompted oil companies to purchase coal mines, creating a big demand for mining employees. In 1981, about 700 students earned bachelor’s degrees in Mining Engineering. By then, however, the energy crisis had passed, and many mining engineers had to look for jobs in other fields. Faced with discouraging job prospects, fewer and fewer students entered the field. The number of yearly mining engineering graduates plummeted during the 1980s. By 1989, only about a hundred bachelor’s degrees were being awarded, and the numbers have slowly declined ever since. In 2004, only 85 bachelor’s degrees were awarded in the field. The few students that do graduate in the field are often unprepared to enter the mining workforce, which can often lead to accidents. Davitt McAteer, former assistant secretary for mine safety and health for the Department of Labor, says in an interview with NPR says that,
There’s a steep learning curve, and there are serious problems if you don’t understand what you’re doing. In the past, we’ve always seen higher accidents when new groups of miners are added to the labor pool.
However, there is a movement to attract more young miners into the field and give them the experience they so desperately need. As part of President Bush’s High Growth Job Training Initiative, West Virginia University, Southern West Virginia Community, and Technical College and the West Virginia Coal Association recently received $3 million to revamp its mine extensnion program, which gives mining students practical experience in mines and mining equipment. Both Virginia Tech and the University of Arizona have started offering different incentives to study mining, ranging from tuition stipends to new curriculum offerings in more multidisciplinary areas like resource development, which focuses on developing mineral resources in underdeveloped countries with maximum benefit for the society. Read more about the current state of mining engineering education in PRISM.
