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Australia's engineering skills gap and labor shortage is the highest it's been for more than a decade. New Swinburne research could explain why.

With the number of students selecting higher-level math subjects in the final years of high school steadily dropping for decades, the researchers have discovered the reasons why and how these barriers are locking promising students out of in-demand jobs.

Lead author of the paper in the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, Swinburne STEM expert Dr. Emily Cook says, "We need to meet students where they are to show the benefits of math. There is not a single decision point students make about their VCE subjects, they are constantly re-evaluating what subjects suit them best all the way through their studies."

Dr. Cook found that balancing workload, stress, enjoyment and motivation were the key factors influencing interest in high level math.

Some found math too hard, while others thought it was not challenging enough. Others hadn't realized they needed math, or could do it, until it was too late and had locked themselves out of pathways. A major theme was around the challenge of picking up math again after time away.

"Math methods in particular were found to be really hard to catch up on if classes were missed, so several students struggled if they missed time for reasons related to health or other subject pressures," explains Dr. Cook.

"This highlights a serious flaw in the STEM pipeline: If a student has to drop down to a lower mathematics subject, they are abandoning the tertiary and career pathways that higher-level mathematics provides, all because of a broken arm."

Along with parents, teachers were also important influences in ongoing decision-making processes, both implicitly through role modeling and explicitly through direct guidance, advice and rules.

Dr. Cooks says, "While streaming of who goes into what classes throughout schooling may be perceived as in the student's interests, it also blocks students who discover an interest in and motivation for mathematics later to find they have 'missed the boat.'

"Known issues like a lack of math teachers, university pre-requisites and the complexity of the ATAR system also have an effect."

Dr. Cook says there is no one solution on how to solve the crisis. "Math is important as it is needed in many university degrees, but also develops problem solving skills for the workforce, where engineering, mining, finance, health and data science require strong mathematical knowledge.

"Setting up systems that allow and encourage more students to choose higher level math would benefit all Australia."