Automation & AI Promise To Cut up to 70% of Minex Geo Jobs. Will AME / PDAC Step Up to Direct This Change?

Advances in automation and AI that promise to eliminate up to 70% of entry and mid-level mineral exploration geology jobs starting with the core shack, and universities' ongoing insistence on graduating geologists lacking the skills and preparation the industry needs to manage the new technologies suggest that now is a good time to discuss the future direction of Geoscience education.

Opportunities for mineral exploration (minex) geologists are facing a significant decline. At the same time, the demand for diverse and rapidly changing knowledge and skills continues to grow—skills that are not being taught at any university.

We need experienced, capable minex geologists to manage, supervise, and critically assess AI / ML output, who can also put boots and eyeballs on outcrops. These skills need to be taught at the university level. The minex industry, for its part, will need to adapt how it values geologists, as few will invest in the effort and costs to upskill without better compensation and continuous work.

Consolidation and shuttering of university programs are inevitable. Because this is Canada, provincial restrictions eliminate any centrally coordinated response. Therefore, the most likely solution will involve industry associations with national influence, such as AME / PDAC, should they be convinced to assume the responsibility.

Therefore, the fundamental questions to be addressed are: How can we introduce the changes necessary to ensure that future graduates are adequately prepared while retaining and upgrading current geologists? How can we create a pipeline where new graduates have a consistent career path to acquire the necessary experience and generate sufficient revenue to encourage retention?

I will present a process to derive a solution: Empower stakeholders and end-users with the critical information required to make informed career decisions and identify what/where change is needed in education. Then, using widely available methods, leverage the competitive free market to drive that change and achieve success.

Fundamental Issues:

Since at least 2000, universities have focused on growth (revenue generation), producing an ever-increasing number of generic “save the planet” geoscience grads. Our systematic interviewing and testing found that while about 30% of undergrad candidates were good to excellent, the rest lacked basic knowledge and did not meet the minimum skills requirements to work in mineral exploration. This mismatch resulted in a skills shortage that has limited exploration industry growth during each up-cycle and crowded out more competent candidates (the best will leave – they always have options).

Every industry's default response to skills shortages or high costs is automation +/- substitution. The introduction of Starlink was the keystone needed to integrate the latest generation of sensors (XRF, hyper/multispectral, AI) into a full-scale core/sample scanning and automation package.

The fundamental driver of the change is deceptively simple. To paraphrase, the geologist has always had to go to the mountain, but better communications and automation now mean the mountain is digital and can come to the geologist. Substitution, the other half of the equation, of experienced “bush rats” or “fieldys” for green summer student / junior geo positions is often orders of magnitude more productive, can usually be outsourced, and the output is often higher quality.

In today’s market, every minex geologist must be able to answer one question: What is your “Competitive Value Proposition?” Automation and AI are not coming for your job; they are coming for your work. Be able to show your value add or become collateral damage.

The harsh reality is that a degree increasingly means nothing except to the robot CV filter and HR policy: it is just a prerequisite to an interview.

As demand for geos continues to fall, sufficient experienced geologists are available to support the industry, although that assumes systematic interviewing methods to weed out the duds.

Lessons from Global Peers:

The severity of the issue becomes apparent when examining parallels abroad. Countries like the USA, the UK, and various EU members are shuttering entire programs, cutting funding and jobs, particularly in STEM fields like earth sciences.

To see what is coming, Canada only needs to look to Australia. Notwithstanding its more robust mining sector and substantial global presence dominating exploration on several continents, Australia has undergone sharp declines in enrolment and funding, closed (or is closing) entire departments, and cut jobs.

Canada—whose exploration activity is smaller, lacks the international escape valve for surplus geos, and must support a greater number of schools—is already suffering hundreds of millions of dollars in post-secondary funding reductions. Some programs' enrolment is down 90%, and many have returned to the dark days when faculty could outnumber graduates.

The Missing Link - Active Stakeholder Involvement:

The most potent force to enact change is the free market, via students as active, informed stakeholders with skin in the game who drive change bottom up.

This force has toppled governments and brought even the strongest CEOs to their knees, and one hopes it has the potential to shift university policy. As a broadly distributed initiative, it would reflect the needs and requirements of the majority, not some top-down policy by decree.

Compared to its peers, Canada has two of the world's strongest industry associations, AME and PDAC, which are well positioned to lead the industry's future, should they elect to do so.

All it would take is funding the independent compilation of career paths and school performance information in relation to industry/labour needs and trends and providing it to users and activist stakeholders to make informed decisions. The rest is simple: there is already an “App for That.”

1985-2025 Continuous Impact of Technology:

The impact of technology since 1985 is stark; exploration projects that once required 6 to 8 months to plan and execute using a small army of junior geos and summer students, plot paper maps, and write the report are now completed in 6 to 8 weeks by one or two geologists.

By 1990, satellite communications allowed the Vancouver office to micromanage the projects, cutting costs by eliminating most on-site senior and intermediate geologists. The on-site juniors and summer students were converted from knowledge workers to data collectors, with interpretation, analysis, and knowledge creation moved off-site. By 1995, geologists' annual earnings had fallen by about 40%, and it was common for summer geos to never see finished maps or lab results.

The next milestone was in 1996, when inexpensive GPS, the recently available Internet, and early GIS increased micromanagement, focusing on quantity data acquisition as the priority metric. Digital data points were increasingly acquired by local fieldys, supervised (or not) by a few geologists, and uploaded to a central GIS tech. Mapping and field interpretation skills and the opportunities to train new generations of geologists collapsed and never recovered.

Today, the advances in automation and AI are just the “normal” continuous change. The difference is that the skills and knowledge requirements change so fast that there is no time or support to strategically plan and adapt. Those entering their first year now will not graduate with the knowledge or skills the industry needs. This needs to change – and fast.

Trends – Drastic Downsizing and Upskilling:

Automation is already providing exploration and mining companies substantial cost savings through staff reduction and the productivity boost of upskilling. The most obvious change is the recent, near elimination of entry-level positions, starting with on-site core/chip logging.

Starlink, automation, and AI enable core scanning companies to offer fully integrated consulting services, from core logging to Technical Reports, promising to eliminate up to 8 to 10 core shack and data management jobs for every scanning unit they install and consolidate the end-to-end geology knowledge value chain under their roof.

Innovative Canadian scanning company examples include GeologicAI, and the (first of many) linkups of scanning/logging automation, geo-consulting, and drill companies, such as the consortia of Major Drilling, Kore Geosystems, and DGI.

The worldwide rate of automation development and implementation, accelerating and disruptive advances in AI, plus scrappy new entrants rolling out lower-cost, custom scanning services, suggest that as early as 2027, the minimum on-site core shack staff required will be a skilled geotech to operate the auto-scanner/logger and take samples, with most geo-functions done remotely.

Those who can manage, interpret, and operate these systems will work; the remainder will be collateral damage. Unfortunately, students and graduates have been abandoned to acquire those skills independently. Considering that most universities already teach the necessary courses within other faculties, all that would be needed is to open these up to geology majors.

Hyper Competitive Job Market:

Exploration executives are offered an intoxicating AI one-stop-shop and can substitute many traditional geologists’ functions with fieldys and geotechs. Companies have little incentive to hire grumpy geologists who ask difficult questions unless they can demonstrate a compelling value proposition and compete aggressively.

The day of the lone wolf / hired gun consultant, once the dominant business model, is nearly extinct, increasingly sidelined by managers who gravitate to the gee-whiz AI that impresses investors.

It is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, geologists as service providers are market takers, not market makers. As long as bean counter CEOs make the decisions, automation, offshoring, and labor substitution will continue to take market share.?

However, there will also be a strong demand for those with specialist knowledge and skills, particularly if they have decades of experience and can work remotely. Therefore, the priorities on every minex geo’s to-do list are to know your value proposition (in a 90-second elevator pitch), be prepared to compete fiercely for every contract, and always be ready to fight their corner.

At least for today, the supply of experienced geologists exceeds the current demand. As automation expands and eliminates more jobs (and surplus ex-professors enter the market), we will likely continue to experience a significant geo surplus, providing the buffer to implement appropriate curriculum changes and upskilling.

Upskilling is a priority, but it requires opportunity and time, is expensive, and carries the risk that insufficient work will be available to justify it.

Therefore, a significant challenge for geologists and the industry is how to upskill while combating market erosion. The greatest threat is likely low-cost outsourcing and offshoring to the large pool of lower-cost, experienced, multilingual international geologists who can also be brought in for short-term exploration projects. Once lost, market share is rarely recovered.

Post-Grad Degree Not the Answer:

Many pursue post-graduate degrees because they struggle to find jobs (or have drunk the Kool-Aid). Because comprehensive, timely career information is unavailable, they do not realize that the estimated 400% post-grad increase over the past 25 years has flooded a shrinking market, resulting in an oversupply that has driven down wages, which, when adjusted for inflation, are generally much lower today than they were in 1990.

This oversupply has encouraged an epidemic of “occupational filtering down,” whereby companies' vanity (impress investors?) recruitment policies select post-grads for what historically were B.Sc. or geo-tech functions.

Too many never achieve ROI, an increasing number never break even, and churn of those leaving for other fields is high. Timely information could help correct this incredible waste of people's lives and talent, highlighting the need for better industry and career data, for which AME and PDAC are ideally positioned.

Most postgraduate degree holders end up in management, not academic, roles, where they are expected to demonstrate superior knowledge of business, finance, project management, contracts and negotiations, and technology applications while still showing strong geological proficiency.

That is a lot to ask of a 30-year-old fresh graduate who has rarely worked in anything, lacks management or business skills, and whose study area was irrelevant to minex.

Unfortunately, recruiters will continue to conflate academic achievement with managerial prowess, which is why productivity is typically 30% lower in those firms, as reported in the published research.

Decades of direct measurement have empirically shown that a B.Sc. with 5 years of experience consistently outperforms post-grad managers, typically doubling exploration output for the same budget. Minex is the only remaining industry that has failed to adopt project management best practices, and this is evident in the consistently low productivity benchmarked to peers.

The conclusion today is two-fold:

1. The post-2000 education arms race of obtaining ever higher degrees to obtain lower-quality work and then competing fiercely for ever fewer jobs is crashing into the Peter Principle wall, where too many lack basic competence and have effectively been handicapped by formal education. In contrast, pre-2000 grads had entered a very different job market, enjoyed about 20% more study hours, typically scored higher on interview testing, and the transition to management was generally smoother.
2. We need academics – in academia. But expecting them to emerge from a lab and magically transform to become effective project managers or executives is fantastical thinking.

A Crossroads for Universities:

If higher education were a typical business, the 40 or so geoscience programs would long ago have been consolidated into two or three regional centers of excellence, which would compete to attract the best and brightest, produce graduates with the appropriate skills, and be judged based on the 5- and 10-year success of their graduates.

While chopping 95% of programs will not happen, many are (or soon will be) unsustainable. The upcoming consolidation will provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for stakeholders to influence outcomes to meet their needs and not be forced to hear only the views of the better-funded voices.

Before assigning all the blame to universities, we must acknowledge and respect that their response to the underfunding crisis was impressively effective.

We must also recognize that as self-interested oligopolists, universities are not evil or the enemy and will be critical partners in developing the new curricula, even if that process is adversarial.

A good start would be providing prospective grad students with the career/industry information they need to make decisions. Once enrolled, the appropriate courses should be incorporated into the degree stream to develop candidates’ management competence/capacity and perhaps help us emerge from our abysmal productivity hole.

Other faculties have been offering cross-program opportunities for years—why is geoscience so strongly opposed to replicating proven effective methods?

Urgent Need for Timely Market / Career Information

Students are just as intelligent, capable, and motivated as ever and are keenly aware that the knowledge and skills they will require have undergone disruptive change. Unfortunately, higher education is divorced from the demands of the market and the needs of the students. The tail is wagging the dog.

No industry, industry association, government, or higher education group provides the national-scale information and data required for stakeholders, particularly students, to make informed career decisions or plans.

A few vocational and technical schools (but zero universities) track graduates at some level and make that information publicly available.

Stat-Can’s National Graduate Outcomes Surveys (NGOS) reports are excellent input for the actuaries in Ottawa but do not include helpful guidance.

Professional Associations attempt to collect at least some data from their members, but that is focused on addressing the needs of their mandate, not providing information for prospective students.

Canada could be the first to do so for Geoscience, with some innovative help from influential industry associations.

Who Can Lead / Drive Necessary Change?

Universities will not change unless compelled to compete for students where the prime metric would be career success for graduates.

Governments lack the money, authority, or credibility to buy a seat at the table.

Professional Associations: Dickens would still recognize these modern Guilds, which aggressively defend their remit to “improve the effectiveness of regulation” and enforce restrictions on interprovincial trade.

Junior Exploration lacks organization or coordination. Many CEOs consider geos to be last-in/first-out cost centers, equivalent to plumbers and electricians when building a house.

AME, PDAC, and other associations whose members rely on the quality and supply of geoscience graduates have the greatest to lose—or win—and could, with minimal effort, spark an independent, sustainable legacy to help build and maintain the industry's future. They are unicorns as the only groups not constrained by provincial trade restrictions and with national credibility.

Students / Stakeholders, if provided the right information, would make rational economic decisions and select programs that demonstrate clear value. The rest will have empty classrooms. But students need information, and today it is just a crap shoot based on hope.

Call To Action:

AME & PDAC: add $2 to event fees to fund an independent, permanent research position in the Department of Economics to obtain and publish yearly updates with the information stakeholders need to make informed decisions. The proposed position would, by design, be apolitical and neutral and avoid presenting opinions or qualifying or rating any university or program.

Information is Power:

Information captured and presented annually should include, but not be limited to:

• Poll the broad mining, mineral exploration, and oil & gas industries for the specific skills, knowledge, and preparedness they seek in candidates and the salary ranges for each skill set.
• Number of students enrolled, number graduated in which program stream, success rate for each school/stream/industry application, and career job hiring success within the first year.
• Which schools/programs have the best success for hires, salaries, and if full-time, seasonal, short term?
• Student career employment (not barista) success rates for 5 years post-graduation, for the school attended, salaries, work history, gender, and career advancement opportunities.
• What courses are most important to a career in any given area, i.e., the “hot” areas?
• What industry sector is hiring, where, what salaries, and what additional certifications were required?
• Identify trends: Demographics, such as “peak students,” may cap future growth. Speculative funding has driven the industry for decades—it's now down 85%, so what’s next? What's the impact of the international market, i.e., outsourcing / offshored for both inbound and outbound? What new fields of expertise are being created?
• Impartially present the information and effects of policy trends on employment, such as BC’s upcoming claim staking and land access changes, or Canada’s own goal of Windy Craggy (1992) that drove minex offshore for a decade and from which it has never recovered.

Call To Change:

For decades, Change Management has made clear that meaningful change must be driven bottom-up by active, involved stakeholders (students): no top-down government policy can (nor should) be imposed on such a diverse group.

Stakeholder-driven change would address at least some of the following:

Let Students Decide: Provide information and leverage the skills, intelligence, and curiosity of thousands of potential and current students, particularly post-grads, to make informed decisions about their future. Asking them to continue to accept “we know what’s best for you…” is patronizing, paternalistic, and arrogant.

Curriculum Alignment with Industry: The most competitive schools would ensure courses are closely aligned with the market, industry, and student needs. Shift the obligatory “fluff” courses toward management, engineering, and technology, ensuring graduates possess leadership and broad technical skills.

Industry-Academic Collaboration: Encourage targeted research aligned with mineral exploration priorities. More than enough industry-relevant research desperately needs attention that meets the “pure science” definition to keep generations of grad students busy (and funding streams fat for departments).

Better Interviewing: There is no shortage of good geos. Skills mismatch complaints are invariably related to poor interview methods. If a dud is hired, look to the exploration managers who failed to use systematic interview methods. CV embellishment is typical, but outright fraud (which is not illegal) is widespread yet rarely discovered. Outsourcing interviewing to an Organizational Development consultant can often save $10s to (many) $100s thousands on even short projects by filtering duds and providing the project geo a list of pre-qualified candidates.

Open Access Public Funded Research: M.Sc./Ph. D. research is useless unless freely and widely available. The International Open Access initiative is a good start. If public support was provided (including the roof under which it was done), it should not be behind a paywall.

Last Words:

It is not the end of the world as we know it. But it is moving faster. Disruptive change creates opportunities for those who are prepared. The collateral damage could largely be eliminated if timely, comprehensive career and industry information was available to prospective students before they signed up.

Consolidation and closure of university programs are inevitable, as is the drastic reduction of career opportunities for minex geologists.

AME / PDAC are the only organizations with national credibility that can influence the changes and ensure that member's and stakeholders' needs are met. Can they be convinced to assume that role?

We have sufficient good to excellent geologists with the right skills and knowledge to support the industry for the next 5-10 years, provided they can generate enough revenue to encourage retention. Any surplus ex-professors that join the market will help plug any remaining shortfall.

Our next generation of managers and executives is currently in grad school. The industry's future success will rely on their business and management skills to reverse the current 30-50% productivity deficit against peers—none of which they are being prepared for but easily could be.

Unless or until geoscience faculties accept geology as an “applied” vs. “pure” science and learn to compete by aligning their curricula with industry and student needs, they will continue producing “educated” graduates who can do little but watch as geo-techs, computers, and/or better prepared offshore geologists do their work.

The proposed bottom-up process is far from perfect. It would be messy, conflictive, and adversarial, but it would reflect and adapt to the stakeholders' needs and requirements, be simple, cheap, dynamic, and require no government involvement.

The future will be what the future is. The only question is whether the stakeholders will be actively involved in determining the outcome or will be passive observers heading to the scene of the crash.