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Universities: Research Assessment Exercise

rose to ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the operation of the research assessment exercise in universities is satisfactory. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I ask this Question much looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow, whom we welcome in this House. I ask it not because I have any particular declarable interest in the matter, but because I have been persuaded by some of my academic friends, who have helped me very much in writing the books that I have written, that something is going rather wrong. In the light of the evidence that I have received, I have now developed a belief that the operation of the research assessment exercise—the RAE—in universities is, to use the word in my Question, very far from ““satisfactory””. Nevertheless, unless I am much mistaken, there is a general view that some sort of system, both to encourage research in universities and to assess research quality, is necessary and desirable. As Sir Gareth Roberts pointed out in the preface to his report of 2003:"““All who examine the impact of the RAE upon UK research and its international reputation must, I think, agree that it has made us more self-critical and more respected across the world””." From all that I have heard, the introduction of the RAE in 1989 galvanised academics—particularly in some of our most senior universities—into research activity that had previously passed them by. It also had the result in the early 1990s of provoking academic institutions into granting early retirement to those who were, as one of my informants put it, burnt out, to open the way for junior lecturers to progress. But in 1992 the RAE took on a life of its own. Instead of remaining a method of encouraging high-quality research, the 1992 RAE started the process of linking research results to the allocation of funding, not just to universities but between universities. The system developed grading—individuals being graded and their departments being graded by a subsequent and complex calculation based on how many of the staff had achieved which, if any, individual score. Responsibility for funding was transferred to the four higher education funding councils. Since then, departments have, on that basis, been awarded by the councils with funds depending on their grade rating. It is this which has given rise to the present problems, which are particularly acute as we come up to the cut-off date for submissions—November of next year—for the 2007–08 RAE. So what are these problems? The first is the age-old problem of form filling. The whole business has become so complex that institutions and individuals are alike diverted from the research that they are meant to be doing in the first place to satisfy the lengthy administrative requirements of the RAE. Bureaucracy, as we know, has a tendency to grow, and this is what has happened, to the point where one of my friends described the burden as,"““rather like governments constantly campaigning instead of designing and implementing policy””." The second problem concerns the way in which funding is decided and the effects of that decision. It is true that the Roberts recommendation that the number of grades should be reduced from five to four for the 2008 RAE has been adopted, but that does not solve the problem. I have to admit that the somewhat arcane method of calculating grades and the system of peer review—itself, whatever support it gained from the Roberts report, open to criticism, grinding axes from panels about what they consider to be ““good”” research—have had some bad press recently. Another effect is that if a department scores lower than four—or presumably one in the 2008 grading—it gets no funding at all. One department that I know of, for example, scored five in 2001 and thus brought in £1.75 million annually to its university. If that department slips down in its 2008 grading, it will completely lose that funding, which would throw the whole department into disarray. The effects do not stop there. It is relatively easy for historians, for instance, to break their pre-determined research pattern on a book and to write, if instructed by a head of department, an article acceptable for the purposes of the RAE—however profoundly irritating that may be. But a philosopher writing up a lifetime’s thoughts on, say, metaphysics—or a scientist with a 10-year programme to investigate the properties of a neutron, or a medical academic—would not find it so easy. The effect—unintended, no doubt—is to penalise laboratory-based subject departments. That can hardly be the best result for original research in the United Kingdom. This, in turn, gives rise to the third problem: the tendency for universities and their departments to treat the whole thing as a game—desperate and in some cases deadly, but none the less a game within a series of arcane rules and against an opponent whose identity cannot truly be perceived. Academics with a strong research record are, in the run-up to RAE, ““tapped””, to use a football expression, and, if they fall to the temptation, are poached to bolster the RAE output of their new institution. I am told that membership of institutions is used creatively; for instance, expanding it to include foreign implants. If the game is lost and the RAE grade is such as to deprive an institution of funding, it will of necessity have recourse to the other funding stream, through capitation-based teaching fees, in order to lever itself back on to the RAE ladder. More and more students are admitted, leading, of course, to longer teaching hours in seminars, more essays, more examinations and, unfortunately, more cases of personal tutoring to try to help and retain students who are experiencing problems. Consequently, there is less time and intellectual energy available for the RAE-acceptable research. The whole process thus becomes self-defeating. These problems are real and the complaints about them are sincerely made. One of my friends was terse. He told me, ““RAE is a pig””. He then went on to say that he was perhaps being rather unfair to pigs. Of course, it is not enough just to recite a litany of complaints. On the plus side, as I said earlier, there is a general recognition that some sort of research assessment is necessary and desirable. So the questions that are relevant are, first, can the RAE continue in anything like its present form in 2008 and afterwards and, secondly, if not, what should replace it? It so happens that we had a tantalising hint of the Government’s thinking in the Treasury document, Science and innovation investment framework 2004-2014: next steps, published alongside the Budget last week. The document states:"““the Government has a firm presumption that after the 2008 RAE the system for assessing research quality and allocating ‘quality related’ (QR) research funding to universities from the Department for Education and Skills will be mainly metrics-based””—" whatever that means. The higher education Minister has announced a working group to study the matter. That is all very well, but we would like some flesh on the bones and I hope that this afternoon’s debate will provide my noble friend with an opportunity to give us precisely that.