Mining Education

the system of preparing engineers, technicians, and skilled workers for the coal, ore, chemical raw materials, non-ore construction materials, oil, and gas mining industries.

The creation of the first educational institutions for training specialists in the mining industry dates from the 16th and 17th centuries, when the industrial mining of coal and ore itself began. The first higher schools of mining in Europe were opened in Ostrava and Freiburg in the 18th century. In Russia mining education began with the organization of mining and metallurgical schools in the 1720’s, and later of mining institutes. In 1724 the first advanced level mining school in Russia was established in Ekaterinburg (now the I. I. Pol-zunov Sverdlovsk Mining and Metallurgical Technicum), and in 1773 a higher mining college was established in St. Petersburg (now the G. V. Plekhanov Leningrad Mining Institute). In the 18th and 19th centuries mining education included the study of mining, geology, and metallurgy.

In the late 19th and early 20th century the mining, geological, and metallurgical disciplines were made separate specialties—mining engineering, geological mining engineering, and metallurgical engineering.

The Ekaterinoslav Higher Mining College (now the Artem Dnepropetrovsk Mining Institute) was opened in 1899; the mining department at the Tomsk Technological Institute, in 1900; and the Ekaterinburg Higher Mining College (now the V. V. Vakhrushev Sverdlovsk Mining Institute), in 1916.

The Moscow Mining Academy (1918), mining institutes in Iuzovka (now Donetsk: 1921), Kharkov (1922), and Krivoi Rog (1922), and mining departments at polytechnical institutes in Novocherkassk, Tbilisi, Baku, and Vladivostok were founded during the first years of Soviet power.

In 1930 institutes for the study of mining, petroleum, non-ferrous metals and gold, steel, geological prospecting, and peat were organized under the auspices of the Moscow Mining Academy. The Magnitogorsk and Siberian (in Novokuznetsk) mining and metallurgical institutes, petroleum institutes in Baku and Groznyi, and mining technicums were established in many industrial centers during the same period. New mining specialties were developed at institutes, and uniform qualifications for mining engineers in different branches of the mining industry were established. After the Great Patriotic War, mining institutes (and departments) were organized in Kemerovo, Irkutsk, Perm’, Karaganda, Tula, Alma-Ata, and elsewhere.

In the 1960’s, as a result of the development of chemistry, radioelectronics, instrument engineering, and machine building and an increase in industrial and consumer construction, some higher educational institutes of mining were reorganized into polytechnical institutes with mining faculties.

As of 1971 mining engineers were being trained by the following mining institutes: Moscow, Artem Dnepropetrovsk, G. V. Plekhanov Leningrad, and V. V. Vakrushev Sverdlovsk. Training was also being offered by the following mining and metallurgical institutes: Kommunarsk (Voroshilovgrad Oblast), G. I. Nosov Magnitogorsk, Northern Caucasus (in Ordzhonikidze), Krivoi Rog Ore Mining, Sergo Ordzhonikidze Siberian (Novokuznetsk) Metallurgical, Groznyi and Ufa Petroleum, Academician I. M. Gubkin Moscow Petrochemical and Gas Industry, and A. Azizbekov Azerbaijan Oil and Chemical (Baku); and by the following 20 polytechnical institutes: Byelorussian (Minsk), Georgian (Tbilisi), Far Eastern (Vladivostok), Donetsk, Yerevan, Irkutsk, Kazakh (Alma-Ata), Kalinin, Kuibyshev, Karaganda, Kiev, Kuzbass (Kemerovo), Novocherkassk, Perm’, Tallinn, Tashkent, Tomsk, Tula, Frunze, and Ukrainian Correspondence (Kharkov). In addition, the All-Union Correspondence (Moscow) and the Tiumen’, Noril’sk (Evening), and Kramatorsk industrial institutes were offering mining training, as well as the Krasnoirsk Institute of Nonferrous Metals, the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute, Yakutsk University, and the Patrice Lumumba University of Peoples’ Friendship in Moscow.

Mining technicians are trained at 125 technical educational institutions, among which 53 are mining schools, 40 are mining and metallurgical and mining and mechanical schools, and 32 are polytechnical, industrial, and mechanical schools. In prerevolutionary Russia specialists were trained at several mining colleges, including Ekaterinburg, Barnaul, Lisichansk (in present-day Voroshilovgrad Oblast), and Gor-lovka.

Higher mining education is conducted in the following specializations: mine surveying; the technology and large-scale mechanization of underground mineral mining; the technology and large-scale mechanization of peat deposit mining; mineral concentration; the construction of underground mining structures and shafts; the installation, design, and operation of gas and oil pipelines and storage tanks; the technology and large-scale mechanization of open-pit mineral mining (and of mining oil and gas deposits); mining machinery and structures; machines and equipment for the oil and gas industries; the electrification and automation of mining; the economics and organization of the mining, petroleum, and gas industries; peat machines and structures; and the physical processes of mining production.

Contemporary mining education, like polytechnical education, entails the study of the exact, mechanical, electrotech-nical, geological, and strictly mining (technological) sciences. The curriculum for mining professions includes three courses of study: general scientific, general engineering, and specialized. The specialized subjects preparing the future specialist in a particular branch of the mining industry include higher geodesy and surveying and geometry of the earth’s interior, for mining surveying engineers; design, construction, and use of mining machinery and structures, for mechanical engineers; electrification and automation of mining, for electrical engineers; and mining technology and mechanization, installation of underground mining equipment, electrification, mechanization, and automation of production processes, for mineral extraction engineers.

The training of mining technicians is carried on in basically the same specializations as in training for mining engineers. Secondary mining education entails study of general educational (within the scope of the secondary school), technical, and specialized courses of study. The list of general technical and specialized courses of study is approximately the same as in higher educational institutions, but the courses are studied on a reduced scale.

Along with theoretical training, a significant part (as much as 25 percent of the time) is spent in practical training. As well as practical work in. seminars, laboratory projects, and term projects, students have three or four periods of practical work during which they study the industry and work as laborers and as technical engineers. Upon completion of their last (prediploma) practical period, they work on a diploma project. The period of training in higher mining educational institutions and departments is from five years to five years six months; in mining technicums and divisions, two years six months to three years ten months. In many higher mining educational institutions and technicums (or departments and divisions) mining education is also available in evening and correspondence courses. In 1971, 115,000 people with mining specializations were studying at higher educational institutions, and 106,000 in technicums. In 1971 higher educational institutions graduated more than 14,300, and technicums, 16,600 mining specialists.

Skilled mine workers (for example, machine operators, drill operators, timberers, tunnelers, and blasters) are trained in a system of secondary vocational-technical schools. About 40,000 mining workers were graduated in 1971. In 1971, 154 secondary vocational-technical schools were training 72,000 students for the coal industry, 124 schools were training 63,000 students for the metallurgical industry, and 80 schools were training 40,000 students for the oil and gas industries.

Scientific and teaching personnel specializing in mining are trained in the graduate departments of all higher mining and many other institutions of higher education. The Moscow, Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, and Dnepropetrovsk mining institutes, the Donetsk Polytechnical Institute, and others can approve the presentation of doctoral dissertations for defense.

The Russian system of mining education and the scientific schools of Russian mining scientists (for example, B. I. Bokii, M. M. Protod’iakonov-starshii, I. A. Time, I. M. Gubkin, M. M. Fedorov, A. S. Il’ichev, D. I. Mushketov, A. A. Skochinskii, A. M. Terpigorev, A. P. German, E. F. Sheshko, L. D. Sheviakov, and N. V. Mel’nikov) have received worldwide recognition.

In other socialist countries the mining educational system is similar to that of the USSR. Among centers of mining education are the Freiburg Mining Academy and Mining School in the German Democratic Republic (Zwickau), the Kraków Mining and Metallurgical Academy in Poland, the Higher Mining School in Czechoslovakia (Ostrava), the University of Heavy Industry in Hungary (Miskolc), a mining institute in Rumania (Petroşani), a mining and geological institute in Bulgaria (Sofia), the mining department of the polytechnical institute in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Hanoi), the division of mining and geology of the university in Cuba (Santiago), and the Peking Mining Institute in China.

In most capitalist countries there are no independent institutions of higher mining education; usually mining schools or colleges are part of the universities. Centers of mining education in the U.S. are the schools of mining and metallurgy at Columbia and Missouri universities, the School of Mining at Pennsylvania State University, and the Colorado School of Mines; in France, the advanced schools of mining in Paris, St. Etienne, and Nancy; in Great Britain, the Royal School of Mines of London University and departments at Birmingham and Leeds; in the Federal Republic of Germany, the mining academies in Clausthal and Aachen and the mining school in Bochum; in India, the mining institutes in Katkagudium and Gudur, the technological institute in Kharagpur, and the mining divisions at colleges of the Universities of India and Osmania. With the help of the USSR, mining schools have been built in Guinea (the Polytechnical Institute in Conakry), Algeria (the Mining and Metallurgical Institute in Annaba), Cambodia (the Advanced Technical School in Phnom Penh), and Afghanistan (the Polytechnical Institute in Kabul).