JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The South African mining industry has, since the advent of the industrial economy, always been the main employment mecca.

The industry has not only provided jobs for millions of workers, but has also offered some of the best careers in the country’s professional hierarchy.

However, that once mighty and economy- dominating industry is, at present, in dire straits, beset by a myriad of challenges, and this is resulting in an uncomfortable trend of contraction.

Despite this, mining is still very much an employment mecca, particularly for an aspirational young populace seeking professional careers. This is evidenced by the fact that South Africa’s four mining schools at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), the University of Pretoria (UP), the University of South Africa and the University of Johannesburg (UJ) have not experienced a reduction in the number of first-year applications, and, in some cases, have even seen an increase.

In fact, UP’s mining school, which is the smallest of the four departments, received over 1 000 first-year mining engineering applications at the beginning of 2015.

Despite the decline of the industry over the last few years, the universities have not reduced first-year intake numbers by any significant degree. If the industry continues to decline, it could be argued that such a situation could considerably influence the prospect of employment for the hundreds of mining engineers and technologists that graduate each year.

However, the consensus among the three heads of mining departments at Wits, UP and UJ is that, despite the downturn in the industry, universities should not be obliged to reduce student numbers, or at least graduate numbers, as this will create a significant gap in skills in the market once the cycle turns.

“As universities, we have to play a balancing game of managing our throughput so that it answers the needs of the industry when there is an upswing. In this current climate, people may perceive that there is an excess of graduates in the industry but it is not the case because our graduates can always find some means of employment,” Wits School of Mining head Professor Cuthbert Musingwini tells Mining Weekly.

In this regard, UJ Department of Mining Engineering head Professor Andre Dougall says the department boasts a 95% placement-within- industry record for his graduates, while Professor Ronny Webber-Youngman insists that only two of his graduates have struggled to find employment since he was appointed head of department at UP’s Mining School in 2007.

Having said that, Musingwini does acknowledge that the industry’s contraction could affect the employment prospects of graduates in the short- to medium-term and, as a result, Wits has started negotiations with a number of mining companies and consulting firms, including DataMine and AngloGold Ashanti, to implement internship programmes.

“Although they might not be earning a big salary, at least, through an internship programme graduates will be seconded to mining companies, get experience and do the necessary blasting and mine manager’s tickets. So, by the time the cycle turns, these graduates will have degrees, experience and the necessary tickets,” says Musingwini.

Managing Student Expectations
The three professors concur that a more pressing challenge facing the tertiary institutions is managing student expectations.

“We believe that many students actually choose a mining engineering degree for the wrong reason. They often have little understanding of the industry and its challenges, nor do they have the right appetite for the profession,” argues Webber-Youngman.

He continues that most students are attracted by the seemingly high salaries, status and luxury perks of top mining executive positions and fail to take into account the hard yards that must be put in at the coalface during the early stages of a mining career.

It is for that reason that, according to Chamber of Mines CEO Roger Baxter, the South African mining industry has a retention rate of just 15% with most graduates eventually moving into other fields such as banking and consulting.

“Those graduates who go straight into consulting or banking positions and fail to put in hard yards are a dead loss to the industry,” laments Webber-Youngman.

In an effort to curb this trend, the universities have introduced mentoring initiatives to counsel students, especially first years, on the nature and realities of the industry, as well as their employment prospects and different careers available to them.

Another reason for the low retention rate, argues Dougall, could be the fact that the South African mining industry does not use its engineers in the correct capacity as many of them end up working as technologists.

“Engineering is a specific skill of lateral thinking and pushing boundaries and new frontiers and this is not always required in the day to day structures of technologists,” says Dougall.

UJ is the country’s main educator of mining technologists and produces an average of 160 graduates each year. Dougall insists that technologists should outnumber engineers by three to one, so, with Wits and UP graduating an average of 130 mining engineers alone between them each year, it is not all that surprising that engineering graduates could end up working in positions more suited to technologists.

High Number of Applications
There is certainly consensus that the number of first-year applicants and enrolments is too high at present. While it is difficult for all the schools to restrict enrolment figures, UP has boldly proposed to cap its first-year intake to just 70 students. More importantly, it wants to implement selection criteria to determine the most suitable candidate for the school.

“Over the last five years, we have done psychometric tests on all our students and have come up with a profile of the most suitable mining student. So we are going to do future student applicants a big favour by telling them they are not suitable for mining. It is a waste of time for a student to study for four or five years and never work on a mine or in a mining-related industry to add value,” explains Webber-Youngman.

Postgraduate Research Drive
While the primary objective of the universities is to supply the mining industry with professional skills, there is an increasing focus on research and development, particularly at postgraduate level.

One of the six key objectives of government’s new Mining Phakisa initiative, which is aimed at transforming the industry and increasing investment, is to enhance research, development and innovation capabilities within the sector.

Once a world leader in mining research and development, South Africa’s research capabilities have diminished considerably over the last three decades.
Webber-Youngman elaborates that this is due to the fact that, in the past, there was an extensive drive in the perfection of production rather than new innovation.

“We took it for granted that we would be able to mine the ore and overcome any challenges with relative ease. Now that we are accessing deeper and hotter parts of the earth, mining is much more difficult, so there is a definite need for us to expand research capabilities. The industry is definitely being affected by the lack of postgraduate skills because it is at the master’s and PhD level that new technology ideas and initiatives are generated,” says Webber-Youngman.

Given the strain the mining companies are under, the onus for this new research drive must fall to the universities and government institutions. Thus, UP, Wits, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, as well as the Institution for Occupational Health, have to be the new pillars of research and innovation, says Webber-Youngman.

As a result, the universities have embarked on an intensive post- graduate enhancement drive.

From a total of 12 postgraduate students in 2007, UP’s Mining School now has 69. Moreover, the school is striving for a 75:25 percentage split of 300 under- graduate and 100 postgraduate students.

While Wits, which is by far South Africa’s largest and oldest mining school, boasts a complement of 201 postgraduate students, Musingwini states that they too are striving to increase the number of PhD students, which now stands at 20, to a total of 50 within the next few years.

Even UJ, the traditional training ground of mining technologists, responsible for day-to-day production, will be implementing a full MPhil and PhD structure for mining engineering once the new Bachelor of Technology degree is implemented in 2017.

Interestingly, despite the downturn in the industry, there has been no reduction in the number of bursaries for mining students or, more importantly, funding for postgraduate studies and projects.

There is consensus that companies are still wholly committed to supporting tertiary education as the pillar to future growth and employment in South Africa’s mining industry.

“If mining is declining in terms of output, which it certainly is in South Africa, education must remain steadfast and research must increase so that we can turn this situation around,” concludes Webber-Youngman.