Our future is determined to a large extent by who we are and where we live. When we are young we may have dreams of beauty, fame or wealth but mostly these are determined by genetics, the benevolence of our families and education.
To discover who we are, a good place to examine is what we study after leaving high school. If we study humanities we probably have a view to a future in the services industry, whether that is researching the criminal code in a major legal case or lecturing on discourse theory.
Commerce, like eating and drinking, is ubiquitous to both streams of endeavour. We choose to play many forms of the game of life and money is just a means of keeping score. Some people, and some nations, cheat, by looking like they have got it when actually they just borrowed it. They look like they’re winning the game, but then reality dawns and they’re way back in the pack.
On Monday, I was listening to a talk by Dame Bridget Ogilvie, one of the most accomplished members of my alma mater. A lady who started her interest in parasitology as a young girl watching her Oxford educated father drench sheep on the family’s property at Glen Innes, between Stanthorpe and Armidale.
After transferring from the University of Queensland to the University of New England, to study under the prestigious professor Bill McClymont, she became the first female student of the Rural Science Faculty. After completing her PhD at Cambridge, she went on to become the head of research at Wellcome Trust, which oversees billions of dollars worth of medical research throughout the world.
The interviewer was talking to Dame Bridget, amongst other things, about Australia's 40 per cent reduction in those studying science. Obviously the tenor of the conversation was that this is not a very clever place for Australia to be. We are not going to get very far as a nation making one another cups of coffee, then suing each other for the consequences.
This year our universities are facing the biggest shake up for some time. Restrictions on how many students can study specific courses, at particular universities, are being removed. Instead, we are moving to a “demand driven” system.
While this sounds like a positive step, more quantity, without better quality, will not necessarily produce a solution to our scarcity of science students.
An essay written by Peter Sale, a former student of Bill McClymont, puts this in stark relief. Peter recounted that when he studied under Bill in the 1960s, Bill was a hive of activity in front of the blackboard at the Rural Science no. 3 lecture theatre; furiously writing out the biological mechanism which explained how the digestion benefits of poultry removed ticks and controlled disease in African cattle.
The enthusiasm was infectious. Thirty years later, at the same Rural Sciences faculty, Peter was a lecturer himself and witnessed a deputation of disgruntled students confront the Dean over the lacklustre and uninspiring courses taught to them by an econometrician.
While Peter tried to replicate the work of Bill McClymont no solution would stick, partly because of the specialised and Balkanised bureaucracy that many university faculties have morphed into.
Unfortunately, no one in government has a real plan about how we can improve the actual performance of our universities, rather than just the number of degrees we churn out. Until we do there is little hope of reversing the demand for science degrees.
The region that we live in is called South East Asia. It generally has very cheap wages, English is a common language but not the predominate language. Economically, the region is racing ahead. South East Asia in the time of the internet means that if it can be done on paper it can generally be done somewhere else cheaper and instantaneously sent to you. This fact was writ large in the recent proposed take over of the ASX.
Inherently, there is a danger for Australia to be too heavily exposed to a services industry which shies away from the ingenuity of the sciences.
This formula works until it become quite apparent that the sustenance of your standard of living comes not from the sciences that you have given up on, not from the industries which you have now become totally reliant on, but rather you are supported by the money you have borrowed and that money now must be repaid or exchanged for other property you own.