‘What will happen if we fail to invest appropriately in higher education?’ I asked Dr John Yu, former Chancellor of the University of New South Wales and Australian of the Year. ‘We shall become the white trash of the Pacific,’ he answered without hesitation. (The increases announced in the federal budget are a welcome boost-a start, perhaps?)
None of this should be remotely surprising. I remember tripping along to the Cabinet room in Canberra twenty years ago at the invitation of Bob Hawke’s science minister Ross Free (himself a former science teacher). It was to discuss what became known as the ‘Nerds and Losers’ survey on the state of science in Australia and its future, so called because that’s what Australian school kids dubbed those few weirdos who opted for Science. Chuck Chunder!
At the turn of the century four of our major scientific organisations-the RACI (chemists), AIP (Sciences Council), Institution of Engineers and Maths Council- issued two statements:
‘If the current rate of university losses continues, there will be no Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics or Engineering to support innovation after 2020 AD.’
‘If the current rate of secondary school participation in Chemistry, Physics and Advanced Mathematics continues, there will be no enabling science in secondary schools beyond 2020 AD.’
They are referring in both statements to the ‘enabling’ sciences that turn the wheels of industry.
Of course kids don’t want to do science. It’s difficult; it seems like an Everest of knowledge you have to climb-all the way or nothing. And you end up, even if you keep scoring mega marks, with twenty times less money than the snots who cruise straight into commerce courses-and wait an extra decade to get there. Nothing has changed. Primary school teachers of science have scant qualification in the subject; the average age of science teachers in high schools the last time I checked was 58 (oddly, the same as for program-makers at ABC Radio National), and starting salaries for science graduates would be funny-if they weren’t tragic. The last time I dared find out how many intending science teachers graduated with physics in a year in New South Wales the answer was two.
I could go on.
The strange thing about discussion of either broadcasting or science education in Australia is that it is so repetitive and the assumptions are so old-fashioned. TV becomes a matter of ratings competitions instead of a discussion of how fresh talent can use the digital technology to produce ultra-cheap original material (remember Mike Rubbo’s Race Around the World or Race Around Australia for ABC-TV?) rather than globalised co-productions costing $2 million an hour. With science the lament is that somehow Jack and Jilly don’t want to study flat out until they are thirty so they can get a job at the CSIRO or at a university (half the geology departments around Australia have been closed, and chemistry is at risk) to earn about the same as a cleaner.
Mortgage consultants, fashion-model etiquette advisers (I kid you not), luxury-goods experts, fifth-layer management meeting attenders, consulting consenting consultants, marketing gurus, lifestyle coaches, people to help you rearrange your clothes cabinet and knicker drawers-these are the earners of our age, often scoring twice the salary of a Nobel Prize winner and ten times the earnings of a post-doc lab researcher with three degrees.
I could go on.
An ABC science reporter with a PhD and six years’ experience (or maybe a five-year, first-class-honours veterinary science degree) will earn the same as a freelance office cleaner and a third less than a truck driver. Not that a truck driver shouldn’t be properly compensated, but the time he spends qualifying is not, shall we say, commensurate. (As I write I see an ad for an ABC science programs commissioning editor requiring plenty of experience. Salary $83,000.)
What’s the answer? How do you convince young Australians-or young Americans, for that matter-that science should be studied? Well, it won’t be by following the example of Education Minister Julie Bishop when, after the latest crisis erupted, she popped up on ABC-TV and earnestly, beseechingly, gave the traditional oration asking Australian kids to commit to a lifetime of hard toil and penury.
There are, of course, degrees with built-in job tickets: dentistry, medicine, computer science and vet science. Student numbers are maintained here, even though the extra cost of the training and apparatus these courses demand requires foundations to be set up to support them. Even forensic science degrees have received floods of applicants, although the paucity of jobs at the other end belies the impression given by CSI and Silent Witness. Fortunately, the courses are ideal preparation for work in environmental jobs so they turn out to be worthwhile as career preparation. But we all need science like everyone needs music. If you are keen on singing or piano, you are not expected automatically to go to the Conservatorium, do concerts as a soloist and conduct a symphony orchestra. Most of us just have an iPod and a record collection. So what if there is no direct job ticket?
Science must be studied at schools, from primary level onwards, because it is essential to life. Aside from the five I gave at the start of this chapter, there is a much more immediate reason that might convince youngsters and their parents. Every job of the 21st century needs some science. Judges and lawyers have to know about DNA and forensic evidence, farmers must understand genetics and chemicals, cooks must be au fait with nutrition, Salmonella and botulinum, business people need to know about IT, and architects about energy and water. Teachers need psychology, prostitutes prophylactics, sportspeople pharmaceuticals, stockbrokers bio-investments, cleaners recycling, carpenters forestry, fishers ichthyology (before fish all die out), and beauticians health care. And everyone needs to know about the environment. Or else!
But is this not a confidence trick? Yes, we all bump into science and technology along the way, but surely it can be left to the boffin in the dreary coat. And surely the professions use only a gloss of science that their practitioners can get by without knowing about.
No, what I am prepared to assert is that you make a far better professional with a solid scientific acculturation. You do not need expertise in rocket propulsion or brain surgery to run a business, but it will help to be scientifically literate and to know how to analyse proposals. This is why it is not a surprise to find people with geophysics or biochemistry degrees in investment banking.
But what about English, French translation or Latin? Science helps with each one. In English there is a way to put word patterns into a computer to tell whether Shakespeare really did write Shakespeare’s plays. Someone decided to do this with Iris Murdoch’s novels and found that her last book used language differently from her others, indicating the onset of Alzheimer’s disease long before the doctors picked it up.
Fiction writers often utilise science as material-Peter Carey in Oscar and Luanda , Ian McEwan in Saturday and Margaret Atwood in most of her books. Michael Crichton (himself anthropologically trained and a doctor) made a big hit with JurassicPark and did science a disservice in State of Fear, with its bizarre line on climate change.