Moreover, it is suggested that if someone is not of the preferred ethnicity, the their work carries no academic merit. That is absolutely false. The ARC does not evaluate research proposals on the basis of ethnicity, and the fact that so-called traditional British empire journals (there are plenty of high-ranking Continental journals as well) rank highly does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, because such journals do not only accept submissions from people from some preferred ethnic background or nationality, but rather from people anywhere in the world. To see that this is the case you only need to look at the contents web-sites of journals online. Ever since the advent of Acta Mathematica more than one hundred and twenty-five years ago (long before ARC journal rankings existed!), journals have become increasingly international and do not just publish submissions from people born and working in the country in which the journal is published. If that wasn’t the case, then Australian mathematicians would only publish in Australian journals and the ARC ranking list would be less than 1% as long as it is now.

Even if it is the case that higher-ranking journals do have a higher proportion of articles from researchers based in certain countries, this will be because that country has, on the whole, a stronger research culture than other countries. As noted above, rich Western countries have better funding and stronger research cultures in general. That’s not racist, it’s just a fact of life. This may change in the future, just as dominance (mathematically speaking) shifted from Germany to the United States with people fleeing the Third Reich and then the Cold War.

I think that if mathematicians world-wide did look closely at the list, they would likely quietly disagree with a handful of the rankings, but agree on the whole that the ranking is about right. Whether or not a journal ranking is an appropriate metric for assessing a research proposal is another matter altogether. The main criticism of this journal ranking list is/was primarily that too many journals and other publications were left off the list. This might be addressed as the process is fine-tuned, I guess.

He goes on to state that he’s seen few ads this year for anything other than graduate positions in his subjects [physics, mathematics and chemistry].

Hardly an incentive for anyone who wishes to become a secondary mathematics teacher.

Likewise in my company, we have no trouble finding suitably skilled people (mostly programmers) even on a short term contract basis.

At the primary education and high school level, I note that two of the people who do tree trimming and gardening for me used to teach mathematics in NSW schools. They are knowledgeable in Logic, Set Theory, and Algebraic Topology, qualified and experienced in education, yet they work as gardeners.

It is a cruel, Dilbert/Dogbert like joke to encourage more students to enroll and seek jobs in this area.