And I never wear a white lab coat. Educators and industry must dispel the myth that the pursuit of science is purely an academic interest. Science studies lead to a huge array of jobs and professional opportunities, and this must be communicated repeatedly at the secondary school level before students make their tertiary selections. Chemists get jobs in the manufacturing and processing industries, in environmental sciences, in government organisations. Earth science graduates are employed worldwide in the industries that explore for and mine natural resources, in environmental sciences, in government bodies and in business.
Physicists get jobs in technologically oriented industries, including the computer industry.
Mathematics graduates become meteorologists, statisticians, computer and information technologists, and biologists and geneticists become environmental scientists, zoologists, plant and animal geneticists, to name but a few options. As the principal beneficiary of community-funded science education, the science industries have a responsibility to sow a significant part of their profits back into the public promotion of the sciences as important, relevant and exciting vocational options for good students, and they must offer attractive salaries. If they don't, student numbers and the quality of the graduates produced will continue to decline and science faculties will begin to disappear from universities, as they already have in some. That means industry and commerce will suffer, and so will this country. The Age Company Ltd 2000.