More through the door: increasing entry to university geoscience education as a means to address the critical minerals skills shortage

Critical minerals (CMs) supply is vulnerable to a skills shortage. We focus on (1) the UK situation, where suitable training is provided but numbers taking the university courses have dwindled, and (2) routes through geoscience education into CM careers, including exploration, mining, minerals processing and recycling. Critical minerals companies collaborate with universities and students, e.g. with research and training scholarships/placements and joint education initiatives, to highlight opportunities and seek employees. Scaling of the valuable impact of the collaborations on the numbers entering geoscience degree programmes will depend on the availability of funds. Alternative routes that have been devised, e.g. mine management degree apprenticeships, are largely for people already in geoscience-related careers, to upskill and further retrain. In this paper we consider how a lack of awareness of geoscience and CM issues inhibits recruitment. We integrated our correspondence with regional (SW England) secondary school (students aged 11–18 years) educators with our experience to highlight key interventions that might encourage more students to go ‘through the door’ into tertiary geoscience education and thereby CM careers. The overarching policy recommendation is a joining-up of CM and education strategies across the levels of education in geoscience-facing disciplines, which recognizes the competing demands for suitably skilled graduates.