An article in this morning’s Australian reports complains that, at some universities, the cut-off score for a course in Chinese medicine is higher than for a traditional ‘Western’ science degree. This has Education Minister Julie Bishop suggesting that we need to encourage more students to study science ‘to ensure the future needs of the nation are met’ and International Organisation for Science and Technology Education chairman Dr Terry Lyons worrying that ‘low levels made science even less attractive to students’.
Demand for science courses does seemed to have declined over time, though it is hard to say by exactly how much, since IT courses were classified under science in applications data before 2001. But adding together science and IT, numbers were higher in the 1990s than now. As a share of total applications science itself been fairly steady since then, with 6.79% in 2001 and 6.53% in 2006. But Dr Lyons seems to be wrong about low cut-off scores deterring good students. As the AVCC’s analysis of applications data shows, science attracted 10.9% of students with ENTER scores of 90 or above. Students are driven more by their interests than the status obsessions that afflict academics.
Though applications are holding up, science is one of the few disciplines in which first-preference demand is consistently below supply. Given there are other disciplines in which supply is significantly short of demand and which lead to professions with labour market shortages it would seem sensible to move places from science into other disciplines. But would this threaten, as Bishop worries, the ‘future needs of the nation being met’?
The answer to that is almost certainly no. Except in low-paid professions like teaching, there is no evidence of shortages in scientifically qualified personnel. Unlike several other graduate occupations, they don’t appear in skills shortages lists and science graduates in some fields have more difficulty than other graduates in finding full-time work. And with over 8,000 people enrolled in science PhDs there are plenty of potential researchers working their way through the system.
Rather than worrying about hypothetical shortages of scientists in the future, we should be more worried about existing shortages in a wide range of health-related fields. If the normal pressures of supply and demand had been allowed to operate, the system would have re-balanced itself years ago – solving, along the way, the ‘problem’ of low ENTER scores for science courses. But as centrally controlled systems are prone to doing, we are producing too much of things people don’t want and too little of what they do want.
Andrew Norton 
Andrew, I think there is a typo in the para commencing:
“Though applications are holding up, science is one of the few disciplines in which first-preference demand consistently exceeds supply.”
Given the next sentence, did you mean to say “…supply consistently exceeds demand”?
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I agree that the arguments about low cut-offs and the need to increase demand through some form of centralised intervention are absurd. There is no market failure in the provision of science degrees. As it is, science degrees receive a proportionately larger subsidy (ie subsidy relative to course costs) than almost all other degrees, suggesting that science confers greater positive externalities to society than other degrees. This has not been demonstrated to my knowledge.
Sure, science school education could be ‘sexed up’. But so could economics, maths and heaps of other (if not all) school subjects. Students look beyond the presentation of a subject in school. Science has low status because there is little adulation and money in it for most scientists. This in turn is because scientific ideas are developed and marketed in a highly competitive global market and most scientists do not make revolutionary discoveries. Even when they do, few journal articles ever make it to practical application in a way that substantially improves peoples’ lives.
One of my pet theories is that most people (especially scientists and engineers) still function with an objective theory of value in their heads and cannot understand the notion that value is created through exchange and not through production.
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Rajat – Thanks for pointing out that error. Now fixed. On your main commment, valuing basic science is very hard. Even if scientists did accept that value was in exchange rather than production, that still would not necessarily help since in basic science it is hard to know in advance which discoveries will have commercial application, and which scientists are likely to make them. So some other form of assessment is needed – of which peer review is the major one within the scientific community (Thomas Barlow has a good article on this in the latest issue of Policy).
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I think there are really two issues, typically confounded by politicians.
1) There is a supply and demand issue as you mention.
2) Some people would argue (quite reasonably in my books) that a fair amount of science needs bright people — most successful research scientists you meet, for instance, are hard working (which anyone can do) but also much smarter than the general population (I would guess 90% would be at least one standard deviation to the right on IQ, as a crude measure). If being smart is a prerequisite to being a good scientist, then it follows that if entry standards become comparitively lower in science versus other subjects and if this lowers the quality of people entering (which seems likely), then you can train as many as you want and not end up with enough decent ones. There are also arguable issues about high creativity, which an even small number of people have, and for some areas of science, this is precursor to being decent as well. Again, shifting the distribution to the left doesn’t help here.
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Conrad, a low cut-off score (the mark of the marginal accepted student) does not imply that the marks of the average or best accepted students are low. For example, if a first year B.Sc cohort is 1,000, there may still be 100 or 10 very bright kids included. The scientists’ argument appears to be that a low cut-off score reduces the prestige of the course and thereby deters smart students applying to do science. On this reasoning, it would make sense to slash science places to increase the cut-off score and gradually increase places over time as the demand for science courses rose.
Andrew, I suppose if students are risk averse and the outcomes of studying science are especially uncertain, it could make sense for society to subsidise the study of science more than other courses. Of course, in my view it already subsidises science to a larger degree than other courses. Also, the same argument could be made for governments subsidising small businesses – an especially risky activity. Although bankruptcy laws are intended to encourage such risk-taking, surely they would not compare to the comfort of an income-contingent repayment method that all students, including science students, enjoy.
I’ll check out the Barlow article in Policy re peer review.
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Low cutoff scores doesn’t necessarily mean dumb graduates.
The dimwitted are usually thinned out in the course of the degree itself (assuming the course isn’t a great big joke, maybe a big assumption).
In addition, ENTER scores don’t necessarily reflect IQ. The student may have taken subjects that got scaled down, may have been sick during exam period, may have just had bad teachers, etc.
A better measure of IQ is the standardisation test (ASAT test) that school leavers take after exams.
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I don’t suggest low cut-offs scores mean dumb graduates. Alternatively, there is undoubtedly some correlation, which basically means you are shifting the distribution to the left, which is a big deal if there is a certain floor level before you can be decent at a job and also a big deal if you are losing the really smart ones (who incidentally, seem to now often get picked up by business organizations, as they are presumably often better than people with business degrees — making the supply of good science people for science even less).
Basically, what you are doing is increasing the number of people qualified to do “dumb” science jobs (where there are already too many graduates) and not enought to do the “smart” science jobs, where there is supposedly an undersupply.
In any case, I’m sure based on any measure of performance, the standard of science graduates is declining, since many of the smart ones realize they can get better jobs in other fields, so to some extent, the argument is about ENTER scores, but just overall quality.
Rajat, maybe you arn’t aware of the dynamics of universities, but I think the problem with cutting the numbers is that you basically make some of the courses unviable. Getting rid of entire areas is of course problematic, since in case you happen to need them later, it isn’t simple to just create them out of nothing. Similarly, in case you actually need graduates in a certain area, you need to get them from somewhere.
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Sorry, I mean “isn’t about ENTER scores”, not is.
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One of the issues here is that there are really three separate streams in science – one aiming for PhDs and research careers from the start, another aiming for (school) teaching careers and a third consisting of people who didn’t get the marks to do medicine, dentistry or, in some cases, engineering. It’s the marks of the third stream that are low. The others are often very strong, and sometimes among the top performers of their school classes.
So I doubt there’s any problem at all. However it seems to have become the trend for universities to whinge about declining enrolments, following the lead of the IT departments. Here I am totally with Andrew N. Enrolments in IT fell because graduates faced unemployment rates of 30 percent and poor prospects. It’s the market, boys.
However turning to Julie Bishop’s understanding of this topic, as demonstrated by her performance on 7:30 Report tonight, it is dreadful. Her terminology shows she has no understanding of science fields and, thus, probably, no genuine interest. But she pretended otherwise.
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Rajat Sood said:
One of my pet theories is that most people (especially scientists and engineers) still function with an objective theory of value in their heads and cannot understand the notion that value is created through exchange and not through production.
I had a great example of this from a church sermon last weekend. It was a guest sermon from a prat of a lecturer at a Dawkins university located in the northern rivers of NSW that I won’t name to preserve the naivety of any prospective students. Apart from lavishly quoting Clive Hamilton, she railed on (for example) about the travesty that is the amount of money paid to actresses like Paris Hilton that lack any moral or contributory worth etc etc.
The rest of the sermon was loaded with a rant against consumerism and how if ‘you’ were more worthy ‘you’ would be like her and instead of buying plasma tvs for Christmas ‘you’ would purchase goats and piglets for starving children in Africa. I had to leave before I got up in the pew and told her she was an idiot.
Ps I have recently developed a healthy respect for Paris’ marketing skills and savvy. I used to think she was an idiot, but compared to the above lecturer, she is a $260 million genius.
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I happened to catch Julie Bishop on the TV tonight by accident. Even with a tame ABC interviewer she didn’t make any good points. Like that there is a shortage of nurses, doctors, physios, dentists, personal carers even. Nor did she point out that ENTER scores are a signal about demand and bugger all else except the lazyness of uni entrance assessors. Or that universities would enrol people in anything even if the employment prospects were nil or less.
She looked like a private school head prefect who was out of her depth.
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entropy, yes, how could I have missed out including ‘religious types and other holier-than-thous’..
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I’ve got a PhD in chemistry and am currently employed as a postdoc. Because it won’t last forever, I still keep an eye out for research chemistry jobs, and there aren’t that many. There are quite a few basic analytical jobs (where a BSc would be fine), but the only significant employers are universities and government organisations (CSIRO/ANSTO/DSTO etc). Most Australian companies don’t know that much research (at least the type which requires skilled researchers) – the exception being biotech companies. Given that, I’m not convinced that Australia needs a big push towards more science graduates.
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I was annoyed by lack of basic analysis in the media reports of the gnashing of teeth about low tertiary entrance scores for science vis a vis higher entrance scores for fashion design and some other courses. Of course, the scores reflect the supply of tertiary places and the demand for them and it would have been good if this was noted in the commentary.
By looking at the distribution of entrance scores over time you could compare whether the same number/proportion of “smart” people are going into science now as previously but not even this basic thing was written about. Of course, the question about the correlation between entrance scores and performance in science courses would need to be discussed, but that wasn’t either in the stories I read/saw.
The question about whether the number of science (or other) trained people will satisfy Australia’s needs is one I don’t know how to address!
Rajat Sood said: “One of my pet theories is that most people (especially scientists and engineers) still function with an objective theory of value in their heads and cannot understand the notion that value is created through exchange and not through production.”
I think that this may have an element of truth – perhaps one reason for it is that scientists and engineers refer to the physical world where you can measure things – they refer to an external reality (and yes the way in which they construct this in their minds reflects an internal reality but I won’t go into that here) and this may be their natural or default frame of reference when looking at the social world.
My own experience correlates with this – I used to have some internal “measure of value” of things (eg what a job should be worth salary-wise) but now I think that there is no such thing as “intrinsic” value in goods or services – it is essentially what people will pay you for those goods or services.
Of course, you can measure things such as energy content or the pollution embodied in creation of any good but this doesn’t detract from the paras above.
entropy: Paris is very smart to have used her skills and opportunities to develop her empire. Good on her!
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Sacha and Rajad – is ‘value’ only measurable in exchange? Do things not exchanged have no value? What is the value of St Paul’s Cathedral? If St Paul’s were sold off, would it’s price be it’s value? If there is value that is not measurable by exchange, how do you weigh up that kind of value?
Paris Hilton may be smart, but what is her value as a role model, what value for the community has she leveraged out of her immense opportunities?
People will pay a lot for porn – it’s a huge industry – is that the only measure of it’s value – its contribution to GDP ? Is Malcolm Day more valuable to Australia then David Malouf ?
If we value people with a science education why not create more demand for them? Are there enough school science and maths teachers with a science degree?
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Russell, what value does St Paul’s have for an anglican compared with an islamist?
Why is Paris a role model, rather than an extremely effective publicist?
Perhaps it might be more constructive to think of exchange in terms of utility rather than money, if that is a stumbling block. I would argue that many people that take up science do it for reasons of maximising utility to themselves, rather than monetary return. Otherwise they would all become plumbers instead.
Is there a need to create more demand for science graduates? And if there is now, will there still be a need when the new intake graduate? A good example (I think) was when the coalition came into government it was thought there was too many doctors, so they limited medicare provider numbers and undergraduate positions. Now we have a shortage. Bad forecasters! Why do people always think that big brother government is always adept at picking where the winners/future demand for services etc. will lie?
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Russell, I suspect you’re thinking that “value” includes or should include some notion of “moral value” or “socially useful” value or some similar related idea.
Now I have ideas about the value to me of each thing I come across in my life to me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything to anyone else unless I convince somehow.
A way that I understand this most clearly is in the labour market. The salary for many jobs don’t appear to be related to any “intrinsic value” associated with them – indeed, what the “intrinsic value” of any particular job is and how would it be assessed are tricky questions to consider! In particular, I don’t think that my salary is related to any “intrinsic value” of the work I do, but rather, ultimately, it’s related to what people are willing to pay for the things I produce in my company. What they are prepared to pay is related to a whole lot of things. At a guess, they’re prepared to pay the lowest cost for as good a product as possible from amongst a range of competing tenderers (including my company).
The people buying our work have decided that my company represents the best option for them. “Intrinsic value” doesn’t come into it much, except perhaps insofar as the clients may think that it takes a certain standard of effort/work/knowledge/skills to produce good quality work and they may take this into account when considering tenderers.
This isn’t a brilliant explanation, but I think it gets across what I’m thinking of. NB: I don’t speak for Rajat!
Now I’m off to watch “The Cut” (a cross between “The Apprentice” and “Project Runway”), in which Tommy Hilfiger applies his values gained through decades in fashion business to work out who is to be chopped from the list of 10-odd remaining hopefulls tonight!
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Sacha – yes I see the logic of your example. My question was prompted by Rajat’s generalisation “that value is created through exchange and not through production”. It seems to me that there are many kinds of value-ing – some entirely subjective and personal – and to reduce the concept/word to just a market concept is to narrow one’s thinking too much.
When you say “that [value] doesn
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I’m familiar with David Malouf, but who’s Malcolm Day?
Also another thing about this analysis of UAI admission, there would be quite a few people who may not have got a UAI in the 90s, but who got very-high marks in science subjects, I would suggest such people would have to be defined in the “smart” category, probably moving into particular specialisations that their skills are tailored for. I could see quite a few science savants dropping marks in English. Much like computer programmers, there would be some scientists whose numeracy significantly outways their literacy, I’ve even tutored people that are brilliant at science but when it comes to writing an essay or stringing a few sentences together (even when they know the topic very well) go to jelly. You have to remember the UAI is an aggregate of quite a few subjects. I had a friend at high-school who missed out on a computer science place despite being placed in the top 10% in the state in the computing subject.
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Hi Russell. In writing
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Stephen – when I finished Yr 12 in Qld we were given a tertiary entrance (TE) score in which, from memory, the subject in which we performed the worst was excluded, possibly to remove a bad outlier result (mine was English). Does something like this happen nowadays?
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Yep that’s true, though in NSW when I did my HSC you only had to do 11 Units, which means at least one unit of your weakest subject would be included in your total mark (I think now most schools recommend the taking of 12 Units), but I have an inkling that English is always included in those ten units that is calculated in determining the UAI.
I just had a quick search, I’m going from Wikipedia which in noting the lack of citation suggests this is not verifiable fact
“Some argue [citation needed] that the policies of mandatory completion of two units of English and its compulsory inclusion in the calculation of the UAI disadvantage those without strong literary background, or those born in overseas. Those supporting the policies regarding mandatory completion of English point out, however, that the completion of English units is necessary for success in tertiary education and professional life.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_School_Certificate
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When I finished year 12 in the ACT, way back in 1988, thesystem allocated each student who completed a tertiary package a tertiary entrance rank. This essentially told you where you fell in the distribution of all ACT students who completed a tertiary package that year. The distribution was based on a score that was calculated on the basis of the students best 3.6 subjects. (Don’t ask me why it was 3.6 instead of 3.5. My understanding is that a major, which was two years of work in a single subject, counted as one subject, while a minor, which was one year of work in a single subject counted as 0.6 of a subject. A double-major, which was two years of work in a single subject, counted as two subjects. Presumably a major-minor, which was one and a half years worth of work in a single subject counted as 1.6 subjects.) The ACT system involved internal assessment by each school, rather than a common external exam. As such, every student undertaking a tertiary package was required to sit the ASAT exam, which was used to moderate between schools on a subject by subject basis. From memory, the ASAT exam involved two parts. One was a logic test, the other was an essay test. At the school I went to, I think some, if not most, of the students took a complete program, which involved seven lines. As such, many students were studying more subjects than the minimum required to get a tertiary package.
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A slight correction to my previous post. A double-major was the equivalent of four years of work in a single subject (two lines of the same subject for two years). A major-minor was the equivalent of three years of work in a single subject (two lines of the same subject in one year and one line of that subject in the other year).
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Damien, I finished Yr 12 in Brisbane in 1990, and the TE score system used there and then was pretty similar to what you wrote for the ACT system in 1988, although I don’t remember the exact details about requirements for getting a TE score. I’m pretty sure I remember that my TE score was calculated from my best 5 subjects taken in Yrs 11 and 12 (I did the same subjects in both years) using the ASAT tests.
“…that the completion of English units is necessary for success in tertiary education and professional life”. One would think that knowledge and skills in English are necessary for success, but not necessarily completion of the specific English units at high school. People can improve their English skills after school – I certainly did in my Arts Degree.
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“One would think that knowledge and skills in English are necessary for success, but not necessarily completion of the specific English units at high school. People can improve their English skills after school – I certainly did in my Arts Degree.”
I’d agree, the only good thing about the requirement is that no student can do 12 Units and not take English seriously, which some of the students in my year, already excelling in 4 Unit Maths, Physics/Chem where treated English with fair degree of disdain.
Unfortunately I’ve got the feeling this was introduced because of parents such as mine, enviously complaining about all the Asian students getting the top university entrance marks by picking all the Maths and Science subjects. I’d tend to agree with you (though I’d like to foster a life-long interest in reading in as many students as possible) that any student who has sat the HSC and performed to such a high-level, will through their career progression develop enough English skills to thrive and prosper.
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Sacha wrote “In the discussion of
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Russell, I think Sacha and entropy have already made the points I would make. But I will respond anyway! I was making a generalisation on the source of value but it was in the context of the post – that is, Julie Bishop’s suggestion that we need to encourage more students to study science
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Rajat wrote – “if there are market failures in the supply of and demand for science teachers, those failures ought to be addressed directly instead of just asserting that government ought to intervene”
But wouldn’t I be addressing them directly, with government intervention, if I waived HECS for students who did a B.Sc and a Dip Ed and agreed to teach for 3 years ? I would get more qualified science teachers, which is what I want.
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Rajat – I didn’t say that “values revealed through exchange are rubbish” I was just objecting to your exclusive use of exchange as a way of measuring value. When you say that exchange allows for subjective values that only applies to those who can be in the market. That’s why I cited the UWA example – the only value of the bushland to UWA is it’s market value, but what about the value of the bush to the neighbours?
I’m not sure all these tradeoffs can be neatly measured and worked out. I think it’s important that people get a good science education – just as important as a good education in history and music and literature etc. How do you measure that ? A scientifically literate community could probably better understand the implications of climate change and agree to take steps to alter our behaviour – how do you measure the benefit of that ?
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One more thing about Julie Bishop! Rajat wrote “For these reasons, I would support moves to greater decentralisation and choice in education provision.” Well, in last Saturday’s West Australian we had every government primary school in the state listed with the results of the grade 3,5 and 7 literacy and numeracy tests. So the ‘worst’ schools could be pointed out etc and Julie Bishop could rant about terrible scores.
What we didn’t see were the results for the private schools. If Julie Bishop thinks people should have information about schools so they can make infomed choices, let her publish the results or these tests for all the private schools. I can’t see that happening – after all, which schools might have more to lose?
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It is possible to understand a notion without having to agree with it.
What of today’s reports that you don’t have to have a minister like Barry Jones for science to cop it in the neck? Plenty of things are difficult but worth doing for that.
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Sacha: The way the TEE score in WA went through was like this:
All year 12 subjects were broken down into Humanities (List 1) and Science (List 2). Your score had to include at least 1 of each branch, and then at least 2 more.
I chose the Science/Engineering stream of subjects which meant my 6 year 12 subjects were:
Physics, Chemistry, Calculus, Geometry and Trigonometry, English, Economics.
Luckily for me Economics was classified as a “Humanities” subject so I was able to use my Economics grade in my final score.
English was by far my worst subject, but since I didn’t have to use it my score was sufficient to get into Engineering at UWA (although not good enough to get into Medicine, Law or Vetinary science).
Strangely enough, English counted as neither list 1 nor list 2, so if you didn’t want to take economics then you were required to take “English Literature” instead of English to satisfy the “at least 1 humanities” criteria.
And in that case, English Literature became your most important subject because not only was it required to graduate high school, but it would form 1/4 of your eventual TER score.
All I had to was achieve a pass in English and put all my efforts into Economics in order to maximise my TER.
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Russell, there may be significant market failures in science teaching or there may not. I can easily see how they could arise, but I haven’t seen any evidence. I can also see theoretical market failures whenever I open my eyes! The point I made at the start of the thread was that science courses already receive a much bigger proportionate subsidy than other courses (like law), in that the government pays a much higher proportion of course costs, and I am not convinced that even more subsidy is appropriate. This is partly an empirical question.
I accept (and have always accepted) your point about non-monetary values (eg bushland), which I would say is arguably a form of market failure. But as I said before, this is not really relevant to the question of whether science teaching in more ‘valuable’ (in the broadest sense) than other careers.
Then again, if you want a particular outcome (action on climate change) and particular action to promote that outcome (more science teachers), I think we are are debating at cross purposes!
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“the question of whether science teaching in more
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Russell, I accept value can be more than about money. But what I have said is that while this issue may be relevant to working out whether bushland should remain unspoiled, it is not all that relevant to funding science teaching vis-a-vis the teaching of other subjects. Maybe it would help if you explained why you thought scientists or science teachers conferred *much much* greater non-monetary benefits on society than lawyers, artists or plumbers.
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“Maybe it would help if you explained why you thought scientists or science teachers conferred *much much* greater non-monetary benefits on society than lawyers” – that’s a joke, right?
In this post AN says that the number of science students is declining – our need to be a science literate community is not declining (I think). So to stop the decline I was offering the suggestion that more inspiring science teachers would interest more students in science (kind of a chicken and egg thing) – so we should train more specialist science teachers. As I’ve said I don’t know what some sort of empirical measure of the benefit of a science literate community would be, or what it would be worth. Call me old-fashioned but I would rather the universities churned out more scientists and fewer MBAs despite what the current market demand is.
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By the by, is there evidence that a lower HECS rate for Science would lead to more people wanting to study science at university?
I personally believe that the logical thinking skills scientific and mathematical training imparts are extremely valuable in all fields (would there be any in which it weren’t?) and that this is a good enough reason alone (disregarding the impact of the direct uses of scientific and mathematical skills) that it is concerning if fewer people are studying science and mathematics.
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Sacha – There was a slight decline in science commencements 04 to 05, but the long-term trend is toward a significant increase. As I noted in the original post, science has a disproportionate share of the 90+ students. Its long-term difficulty is that the number of places available exceeds the number of first-preference applicants, the only field apart from agriculture in which this is a regular problem. This means that it must take a tail of students with marks that aren’t so flash.
Interests drive course choices. Prices could possibly affect decisions between courses that cater to similar interests, such as between the same course at different universities, or between say medicine and science. But this favours science under current policies anyway. I did have a post on this, but it was lost in the Catallaxy server crash.
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Thanks Andrew.
The concern about low standards in science education seems connected to what some Australian academic mathematicians see as a decline in their student’s mathematical abilities and in mathematics education in school and university, an example of which is given in the following article in the most recent Gazette of the Australian Mathematical Society: http://www.austms.org.au/Publ/Gazette/2006/Nov06/mathmatters.pdf
I certainly know that high school mathematics is being taught in large classes in universities and I’m fairly sure that this didn’t happen to nearly the same extent 15 years ago – and my guess is that this is an outcome of universities removing high school mathematics subjects as pre-requisites for university courses.
In removing particular high school subjects as pre-requisites, students no longer have to choose particular subjects at the end of Yr 10 if they want to have the option of enrolling in, say, an Engineering degree (the pre-requisites for which at Qld Uni in 1990 being Maths 1, Maths 2, Physics, Chemistry and English – English being a pre-requisite for all Qld Uni Bachelor degrees from memory) and so this introduces flexibility for students, but it means that remedial classes may need to be brought in to bring everyone to the same previous standard.
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To what extent are some mathematics and science subjects taken by students in non-science degrees? It used to be the case that most Bachelors degrees allowed for one of the three majors to be taken outside the faculty in which they were offered. Some economics students may want to take mathematics units. Some philosophy students may want to take mathematics units (especially those that are interested in logic). Some philosophy students may want to take both computerscience and psychology units (especially those that are interested in thought processes and the nature of the mind). Some sociology students may want to take psychology units. Geography is likely to be of interest to both arts/social science students and science students. There are likely to be other useful combinations as well. Combined degrees are a good way to deal with complementarities between subjects in different faculties and diverse interests as well.
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Clarification: I am not sure whether or not “most” Bachelors degrees allowed for an external major. However, some of them did. I think the B.Ec., B.Sc. and B.A. degrees at ANU did when I was there, but I could be wrong. I am not sure about the other degrees.
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Damien – I don’t have any figures I can give you, but doing subjects from other faculties is common, and indeed will be compulsory at Melbourne University from 2008. And as you suggest, there are lots of courses in which maths units would be relevant.
Sacha – Inevitably, as the school system declines, universities will have to offer more remedial subjects.
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When I started my law degree (2002), a certain number of non-law subjects were compulsory. Everyone had to do financial accounting, a maths subject (with a heavy focus on finance maths) and basic economics. At the time we all whinged and complained, and the requirement was dropped for later years.
It’s only now that I realise how useful being forced to study stuff I’d never even looked at before actually was. I hope the law school reintroduces it.
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In the biological sciences, many of the most intelleigent and capable students are disgusted by animal experimentation and dont finish their degrees. These are students (with excellent VCE scores) initially located at top universities from thee top ranked schools.
They realise that what passes for science is stupid cruelty and results in mass human death when ineffective drugs and treatments are passed as safe for humans because some types of animals can “tolerate” them.
Case in point Thalidomide, and the recent anti-inflammatory drugs that have been taken off the market in Australia and the west after causing at least 30,000 deaths by stroke in spite of vivisectionists passing them as safe.
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