I don't really see any room for improvement. I mean, you're sitting staring at fucking rocks all fucking day, instead of actually doing something requiring skill or thought or touching the keyboard... You want the rocks to shoot back at you? There are rocks that shoot at you: they're called rats, and they're what most carebears mine. For more materials and money than miners, ironically...
Slightly flawed, there. Rats don't tend to drop any ores. Ores are what your ship is, in most cases, made out of. Equipment and ships and all your fun pew-pew pellets... Those are all manufactured. They're manufactured from "carebears". Like it or not, everyone on EVE needs "carebears" to exist. Miners are what let you blow the everloving crap out of random people. They make your ammo and guns and ship possible.
Rats drop equipment, which can be broken down into ore. In addition, ratters are carebears too.
Hell, I wouldn't even call miners carebears, really. Miners are more like serfs. Whether or not they provide valuable materials doesn't elevate them above the level of serf.
Now, if they also did high end industrial work/research, then there's a case for them being higher, but then again, to be a dedicated miner, you have to more or less exclusively develop the related skills, all so you can stare at more rocks at once after a few months...