Mining afk you will lose ships. Mining actively is not great earning unless you have multiple toons and if you can multibox there are other things you can do with multiple toons. Like level 5s.
Unless you are into roleplaying an industrial toon there are a tonne of alternative things you can skill into that will have other uses. For instances exploration. What you use to scan down sites can also scan down mission runners or pvp ships. Mining sp can only ever be used for mining.