New research will today argue that a shortfall in science students at Australian universities is placing future Australian innovation at serious risk.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The research, commissioned by Australia's chief scientist Ian Chubb, shows the number of university science enrolments at all course year levels has stagnated in the past decade, while health, management and commerce enrolments have leapt ahead.
Professor Chubb commissioned the research to support a report he is preparing to deliver to Prime Minister Julia Gillard on how to boost the number of science graduates in Australia.
The research, prepared by University of Helsinki and Monash University researcher Ian Dobson, shows that enrolments in science courses at all year levels, and by Australian and international students, grew by 18,257 places in 2010 over 2002 levels, to 78,858.
In the same period, health enrolments grew by 66,293 places to 162,611 places and management and commerce enrolments grew by 96,719 to 325,508 enrolments.
''Technical growth and innovation tends not to come from accountants,'' Dr Dobson said from his home near Helsinki.
''It comes from the people with skills in the enabling sciences like chemistry, maths and physics.''
The report found that compared with an overall increase of 33 per cent in university enrolments, enrolments at all year levels in science had risen by 30.1 per cent.
''Superficially, therefore, this seemed like a very positive outcome, but the reality was that this apparently positive state of affairs masked a long-term decline in uptake of what are generally known as 'the enabling sciences' of chemistry, mathematics and physics,'' the report found.
''The apparent expansion in 'science' came from an expansion in the behavioural and biological sciences, and even in the 'non-sciences'.''
Dr Dobson said former prime minister Kevin Rudd's discount HECS scheme for maths and science students had been starting to generate more undergraduate domestic enrolments in the subjects, and the decision in November by Ms Gillard to abolish it for new students from 2013 - saving $403.6 million over three years - was a mistake.
''These things take time - it takes a generation - but you just can't do it in the political timeframe,'' he said.
''[Politicians will] never admit this, but basically they're just thinking of the next election.''
But the Grattan Institute's higher education program director Andrew Norton, a former advisor to University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis and former federal education minister David Kemp, said the HECS discount policy had been a needless waste of money.
''Obviously, [the Dobson report] is about enrolments and not whether there is any evidence that the supply of science graduates is inadequate to demand,'' Mr Norton said.
And he said the number of Australian students applying to begin an undergraduate course in science - compared with the number of Australian and international students enrolled at all levels - had actually risen in recent years.