Few graduates dig mining

PARK CITY — The receding hairlines and tired faces offer the first glimpses of a growing problem for the nation's mining industry.

As the more glamorous and higher-paying professions of business and law capture the attention of college students, mining engineering attracts fewer people.

That is leading to a growing shortage of mining engineers, who design and manage the nation's surface and underground mines, which produce everything from coal and diamonds to iron ore and gold.

The issue was one of many tackled Thursday at the Utah Mining Association's annual convention in Park City.

"In order to replace those who are retiring over the next 10 years, we'll have to triple our production of engineers," said Kim McCarter, professor and chairman of the University of Utah's mining department. "That's not assuming any kind of growth. That's just replacing those who are retiring."

The number of mining engineers graduating from U.S. universities peaked in 1980, McCarter said, with roughly 700 graduates. From 1980 to 1984, the number dropped to roughly 200.

Today, about 100 mining engineers graduate annually from U.S. universities.

The dwindling interest in mining jobs, McCarter said, stems from an often misunderstood industry.

"When we answer the phone, 'Mining and engineering,' we still get people asking us, 'Do you still do that?' " McCarter said, adding that America's present course of graduating fewer engineers will lead to a less-competitive nation.

Bruce Lindsay, human resources manager for Arch Western Bituminous Group, based in Grand Junction, Colo., said the labor shortage extends to electricians, trained miners and maintenance people.

"We're a little short on mining engineers," Lindsay said. "We recruit in all the Western states for our mining engineers, from the University of Utah, Colorado School of Mines, Montana Tech and the University of Missouri-Rolla."

After the mining industry's boom in the 1970s and early 1980s, the market went flat and hiring stopped.

"We literally missed a generation of people," Lindsay said. "We weren't doing a lot of recruiting. Turnover was minimal."

Now turnover for companies like Arch Western is reaching 10 percent, Lindsay said, up from a 2 percent turnover rate a generation ago.