Why students choose to study for a forestry degree and implications for the forestry profession.(Report)

Introduction

The forestry profession in Australia has been criticised for its management of Australia's forest resources for at least four decades. In response, the profession has been defensive, believing it has often been misrepresented. At the same time, however, there has been recognition within the profession that it has not communicated effectively with the public (Kentish and Fawns 1995). Forestry educators and employers of forestry professionals are increasingly concerned that this failure is affecting the future of forestry education and the profession in Australia.

Recent government and professional initiatives address communication with potential forestry students but little research to support these initiatives has been published. This paper has been written to help all those in forestry in Australia who wish for their profession to survive and thrive.

Declining enrolments in forestry degrees

The number of students at Australian universities choosing to study to become professional foresters has decreased over the last 15 years (NAFI and A3P (National Association of Forest Industries (Australia) and Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council) 2006; Kanowski 2008). In 1999, for example, The Australian National University (ANU), the University of Melbourne (UMelb) and Southern Cross University (SCU) together produced about 80 graduates. By 2005, even with the addition of graduates from a fourth university (University of Queensland), graduate numbers were falling. Kanowski (2008) noted that over the five-year period to 2005, the number of students in Australia graduating in forestry, aggregated over four universities, had halved.

Many factors have contributed to this decline. They include the closure of the Australian Forestry School in the sixties, the perceived need for forestry to become more 'relevant' to the needs of society at the end of the 20th century, the restructuring of university courses, the gradual shift of employment opportunities for foresters away from the public to the private sector, and the increasing cost of gaining a university qualification.

The decline in the number of people seeking to study for a traditional forestry degree, despite the availability of jobs, is also occurring in Canada, USA, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and has been described as part of a global crisis facing the professional education of foresters (Innes and Ward 2007; Kanowski 2008).

At present, the number of students graduating in Australia is about 30 annually and diminishing. This is estimated as half the number of tertiary-trained foresters required to meet the demand from employers in the Australian wood and paper products industry (Australian Forestry Education Partnership 2007). As a result, employers are recruiting foresters from overseas (Kanowski 2004; NAFI and A3P 2006).

It is worth noting that an equally worrying decline has also occurred in enrolments in agricultural courses in Australian universities 'indicating that agriculture is not perceived as a desired career' (Pratley 2008). The supply of agriculture graduates is also well short of the market requirement. As a result, job 'vacancies are being filled by less qualified professionals and the industry is less well serviced' (Pratley and Copeland 2008).

Continuing but changing demand for foresters

In 2004 Kanowski noted that the demand for professional foresters was continuing but changing. Demand reflected 'both relatively buoyant economic growth, and the expansion of private plantation forestry and the roles of trees on farms' and disguised 'the shift, associated with fundamental changes in both the public and private sectors, from salaried to self-employment, and to shorter average periods of employment with any particular employer'. 'As a consequence', he stated, 'there is probably now a higher proportion of Australian professional foresters working outside 'traditional forestry' roles than at any time' (Kanowski 2004).

Evidence of the shift from public to private employers in Australia over the last 30 years can be seen in Figure 1, which compares the employers of foresters in 1977 with those in 2006. Cremer (1977) surveyed the employment of a thousand foresters in Australia and the 2006 Census of Population and Housing (1) surveyed 1574 foresters, of whom 84% were men.

The major employers of foresters in 1977 were state, territory and local governments, which accounted for 74%. This figure had fallen to about 40% in 2006. The greatest change, however, is seen in the private sector. From just over 10% in 1977, the private sector employed 55% of available foresters in 2006.

The job market for professional foresters in Australia is now supplied by six universities: ANU and SCU continue to offer four-year undergraduate science (forestry) degrees; UMelb offers graduate degrees only, having phased out its undergraduate forestry degree; Edith Cowan University established a new program in 2005; and the University of Queensland (UQ) and the University of Tasmania (UTas) both offer forestry units. Five of these universities (ANU, UMelb, SCU, UTas and UQ) have also formed a consortium that offers the National Forestry Masters (NFM) program.

Forestry at the ANU

The experience of the ANU Forestry Department, created in 1965 when the Australian Forestry School became part of the ANU, is instructive. It has, since its inception, offered a four-year Bachelor of Science (Forestry). Undergraduate enrolments in forestry rose from a low of just over 100 in 1967 to a never-to-be-repeated high of about 277 in 1976. A decade later enrolments had collapsed back to the 1967 figure (Searle 2000).

At this point, the failure to attract students was deemed so critical by the ANU Department of Forestry that talks began about ways to reshape the image of the forestry degree. The department also linked with the Departments of Geography and Geology, and the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, to form the ANU School of Resource Management and Environmental Science (SRMES). In 2001, this became the School of Resources, Environment and Society (SRES) which was 'the merger and associated disestablishment of the former Departments of Forestry and Geography and Human Ecology' (Kanowski 2008). SRES evolved into the Fenner School of Environment and Society in August 2008.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Enrolments in the forestry degree drifted lower and lower, however, until in 1999 fewer than 100 students were enrolled in accredited courses. By 2005 only 12 or so students graduated with forestry degrees from ANU (Kanowski 2008). The 2001 initiative, however, was successful in increasing science student enrolments.

Other universities and government agencies in Australia have also adopted name changes that exclude the word 'forestry', possibly to counteract adverse connotations associated with the terms 'forestry' and 'foresters' but also to reflect the fact that forest management no longer exists in isolation but interacts with other disciplines and forms of land …