Professor Barbara Messerle, Executive Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering, recently contributed the following to the Science Meets Business Thought Leadership Series.
The world around us is undergoing rapid transformation by people finding innovative ways to use information and technology to better serve our needs. At the heart of these disruptive innovations are people with deep groundings in science, technology, engineering and maths – the STEM disciplines.
Critically, the number of kids studying subjects in school that lead to STEM courses is decreasing. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics only 29 per cent of STEM graduates are women, and in the key disciplines of IT and engineering this falls to 14 per cent. Low enrolment numbers for women in STEM have been a consistent factor since I was an undergraduate in engineering.
Today, Australia competes in the global race for innovative ideas with only half the team – the male half. If we are to develop new industries that move us beyond Australia’s traditional industries and allow us to be globally competitive, we have to change.
For a start, we have to help our kids, and in particular our girls, understand the wealth of opportunities open to those with a STEM foundation. We need to address any perceived or real bias in our high school exam systems and marking arrangements that discourage kids from taking up studies in maths and science. With the highly competitive nature of the results from high school assessments, we need to work to change views that taking STEM subjects could lead to any disadvantage.
We also have to recognise – as a positive – the fact that many STEM graduates will work in roles outside of the classical STEM disciplines. They are role models for a future in which interdisciplinary graduates are able to contribute to the transformation of traditional industries such as the finance, automotive and healthcare sectors.
In an effort to stimulate interest in STEM early on in schooling, Macquarie University runs the FIRST Robotics program in Australia for children in years K–12, with key sponsorship by Google and Ford. This program gives all participants a chance to work as teams that bring together mechanics, electronics, information processing, design and software development skills to build robots and compete with them.
This is an example of how we can not only inspire school students’ interest in STEM, but create pathways for them to pursue these fields into further study, careers, and entrepreneurship in a variety of areas. Today the program involves 5000 kids from 600 schools, and the total number of participants across Australia is rapidly growing.
Having stimulated interest at school, we need examples at universities and in the workplace that highlight the important roles that women with STEM backgrounds occupy. This is vital to improving the pull of women through universities and into industries where they are able to make meaningful contributions.
At Macquarie, we are actively focused on building women’s participation in world-leading research programs through the Science in Australia Gender Equality (SAGE) program. We are able to celebrate the achievements of our world-leading female researchers, including role models such as Macquarie University’s Professor Ewa Goldys (recent winner of a Eureka Award) and Professor Nicki Packer.
Having shining examples of where STEM can take our young women is key to closing the gender gap. We need to expose women to the right kinds of images and messages, which involves having conversations around the non-traditional and non-linear career pathways available to them.
Have you followed a non-linear career path to Macquarie? Share your experience in the comments below.
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As a US based PhD student I agree with some of the above comments. We are also faced with an oversupply of PhD graduates. Personally I feel it is counterproductive to try and address gender differences in STEM university hiring as Melbourne Uni has done in making 3 available positions in maths and stats only available to women. This means even if you won a Fields medal and were a man you could not apply for those positions. As a female scientist I don’t see any good coming from that strategy. I only want to be judged on my individual merit. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/19/university-of-melbourne-mathematics-school-advertises-women-only-positions
This is Oz, Amy. We want social equality. Barbara, you go girl! As for hiring practices I would say we need to go further than Melbourne uni in restricting to Aboriginal female mathematicians as they are under-represented. What better way than that to encourage participation of our Aboriginal youth in STEM subjects and uplifting Aboriginal communities.
In a perfect world we would all be judged on merit, though merit can mean a lot of things, not just academic achievement. Hiring practices can favour people who look and talk like the people doing the hiring, which in STEM areas may make it difficult for women, among other under-represented groups. Affirmative action is one way of addressing the issue. I want to see how we can lift the participation rates for female students in some STEM areas where currently they may be only one in ten.
I’ve had what might be described as a non-linear educational and career path. I studied a lot of STEM subjects in high school (Chemistry, Physics, extension Maths) but graduated university in Arts. My early career was overseas and in language-based work. I changed careers to move into what was then ‘multimedia’ and Internet production in which the logic and problem-solving skills of maths are useful, and I was able to balance technical, language and design interests. I moved onto the educational side of technologies, doing a Masters and now PhD studies part-time as I work – currently in the faculty of science and engineering as a learning designer. The question of whether science graduates have a career path in their field is vitally important to them and to the country, as other commenters have noted. However, a working life that switches from the field in which you studied is not always a negative, and the skills and perspectives you develop are important personal resources, whether you use them as you first expected to or not.
I totally agree. Every student who graduated from my degree, the entire year, had to find work in other fields. There just aren’t enough STEM jobs today. Australian universities can’t keep pumping out ever increasing numbers of STEM students and just expect the jobs to appear. There needs to be demand. Universities need to use their political clout and business connections to make that happen.
The whole issue with encouraging people to study STEM subjects is that there are no jobs in STEM disciplines here in Australia. This is directly due to the Australian government’s lack of support for local manufacturing. Manufacturing companies, both large and small, are going offshore to save costs, and they are taking scientific and engineering jobs with them.
Our young people will only be encouraged to study science and engineering is if they can see a future in it. Why should they rack up a massive HECS debt only to be unemployable in their field of choice? Most science and engineering graduates will not be able to pursue a career in academia, and most will probably be better suited for a career in ‘the real world’. But there won’t be one! In my career as a non-academic scientist, I have worked for a number of multinationals, all of whom have now ceased operations in Australia. They have a presence here only via imports.
Academics can support the lack of opportunities here in Australia by lobbying government to support manufacturing industries to either stay or to set up a presence here in Australia. I call on all of Macquarie’s science and engineering academics to raise their voices on this subject.
I welcome a robust discussion on this subject — it’s one that we need to have!
I agree completely. We have a distorted situation indeed. Why push for more graduates in STEM when the jobs really don’t exist! Its not about gender equality but job opportunity. As a recent PhD graduate I can honestly say the opportunities are scarce and its disheartening for any graduate these days. Whether they are male or female is somewhat irrelevant. Always the same replies to applications in academic research “need more high quality publications”. How, when you have a limited income and limited lab facilities.