One way of encouraging Australian university students to take science is to make the subject “grippingly” interesting, chief scientist Ian Chubb has said.
“We need to encourage more students to take science at university. Sometimes that means more money – offering students scholarships straight out of high school to study science. But mostly, we need to make science inspiring again, make it interesting,” Chubb said in a speech at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation on 14 March.
A government-commissioned report published last month showed that science enrolment in Australian universities had the fourth-lowest growth rate in the period 2002-2010, with only enrolments in agriculture, information technology and education faring worse.