Whatever happened to all the mineral processing polymaths?

It was interesting to hear that a new University in UK is to open next year offering only one degree. The London Interdisciplinary School aims to teach students to solve complex problems which cut across disciplinary boundaries, and to develop a polymathic way of thinking.

This is a bold step which acknowledges that these days many academics tend to be highly specialised and unable to take a truly holistic view of their chosen subject. This has become very apparent in mineral processing academia over the last few decades, where the pressure is on academics to pursue research and publications, often at the expense of teaching.

At the beginning of last century there was no recognised mineral processing profession. Ores were of high grade and any concentration necessary was undertaken by the miners using simple sorting and gravity techniques. The increasing demand for metals led to the development of flotation, and mineral processing became an acknowledged discipline, but teaching was the primary focus of the main universities, and the teachers were essentially well-rounded mineral processors, such as the legendary Arthur Taggart, the first person to be offered a Chair in Mineral Dressing, in 1919 at the Columbia School of Mines in New York (posting of 6th March 2012). His Handbook of Mineral Dressing is a massive volume, still used today, and I doubt if any mineral processor today would be able to match this in its scope. The recently published SME Mineral Processing Handbook is the modern equivalent of "Taggart" but this is the result of the efforts of a large team of specialists from academia and industry.

When I began my 22 year stint at Camborne School of Mines (CSM) in 1974, the majority of the academic staff had been recruited from industry, many like me from the Zambian Copperbelt. Very few had PhDs and there was very little research being undertaken. CSM's reputation had been built on its education of mining engineers by its fine teaching staff. The Royal School of Mines in London did have a world class research reputation, but research was not at the expense of its equally strong commitment to teaching.

Things began to change in the late 1980s, and when CSM was merged into the University of Exeter in the early 90s the pressure on academics to research and publish began to build, so I decided in 1996 to opt out and try my luck doing my own thing.

Now it is evident that teaching in many universities is secondary to research, and the pressure to publish for career advancement is enormous. Recruitment of staff from industry is now not the norm, and an increasing number of academics in minerals departments have never seen a mine, let alone worked on one. A typical career path is now postgraduate research leading to a PhD, followed by a junior lectureship, researching and teaching in the same narrow post-graduate field. And my experience editing Minerals Engineering has highlighted that these fields of expertise are becoming ever narrower, flotation for instance now having reviewers who can only assess papers in specialist areas such as flotation physics, sulphide flotation, oxide flotation etc. Reviewers who can assess work on 'general' mineral processing I usually choose from industry.

So are today's mineral processing students getting the broad-based education which they deserve and which is necessary in the modern mining industry?

As John Starkey pointed out in his comment on the posting of 17th December, there isn't a mineral processing industry. There is a mining industry, and mineral processing is part of it. Also, most mine sites have a mill on the site and very few mills exist that are not on a mine site. The expert mineral processor therefore cannot do his or her job well if he or she does not understand mining, because the concentrator’s feed always comes from a mine. Very few mine General Managers are mineral processors, they are mining engineers, who have a broad knowledge of not only mining, but geology, surveying, mineral economics, mechanical and electrical engineering, as well as mineral processing.

I was recruited to Camborne in 1974 to teach mineral processing on the mining degree, but three years later we also started a mineral processing degree. Although it turned out some excellent graduates, it was always difficult to recruit sufficient students to make it viable, and in retrospect I feel that the best route for producing good mineral processors is probably a broad-based degree in mining, followed by an MSc in mineral processing.

I would appreciate your views on this?

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