No, not really. When a new account is created, Mining 4 can be skilled into within 18 hours, assuming it was an alpha account. Mining 4 will unlock the T2 Miner to put on the Venture you get as part of the Tutorial quest.
Unless you can bother spending 18 hours skilling for using improved mining equipment, you’re hardly a miner, and, if it’s your first account (rather then a new alt), you’re most likely not going to mine “valuable” ores before skilling up mining decently, anyways. The valuable Ore mining, for most players, begins when they join a corporation, and corp-mates invite them to attend a mining fleet (including Ice or R4 mining in highsec).
The T1 miner having a higher efficiency then the T2 one is only explainable by CCP wanting you to create more alts. Any new alt can immediately use the T1 miner and a Venture right after birth, so just create a few new alts, remote set up the home station, suicide jump clone to your corp’s null, and help out at the “high efficiency mining op”.
If miners had at least a bit of a spine, they’d just A-II all of the R64, and sell it for it’s mainstream marketplace trade median to their corporations’ industrialists, rather then selling it for 90% or even 80% Jita buy price and paying “moon mining tax”.
Public Highsec Mining Fleet pays 15M/h for you to mine in a Venture, 25M/hr in a Propsect, and 45M in a barge, isk on your hand, no 90% buyback bs, no mining tax bs. FC loses his orca to suicide gankers? You lose your ship? You still get your isk for the time you mined in the fleet while it was operational. Unless the R64 moon mining, that pays only for stuff that was safely moved into a station, after reducing mining fees and buyback losses doesn’t pay out more then CONCORD umbrella mining, why even bother with it?!