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Universities: Research Assessment Exercise

My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to take part in this debate. Earlier, I spoke on the Rural Payments Agency and had to confess that I was not a farmer; I was speaking purely as an academic. But this is one field in which I can say—to paraphrase the Prime Minister—that I bear the scars of RAE on my back. I was on the panel for economics in the first RAE, and in the latest one; for seven years, I was chairman of the research committee for LSE and saw through submissions for two RAEs. On balance, I am more for it than against it. It is hard to explain to the taxpayer why we complain about the RAE. Academics are asked whether they have written four pieces of published, refereed work in four years. At one per year, it is not slavery. When RAE was first introduced I had many colleagues pregnant with great ideas which were not going to fructify in the prospect of the coming RAE, but would perhaps in the next. We would ask them, ““What is this great earth-shaking thing that you are going to do that you cannot do anything else in the meantime?”” As a social scientist—I was actually an economist, doing more quantitative social science than other social sciences, but I also sat on an interdisciplinary board in the last RAE—I found that as long as there is peer review, measurement is acceptable because it is done by people who know all the difficulties of that subject. If academics complain too much about being assessed by their peers, someone else will be assessing them and be less regarding of their complaints. So, while we want to preserve our academic freedoms and creative opportunities, we have a RAE-type of peer review system based on some kind of grading. If you cannot grade, you cannot compare; not everything that everyone does is a work of genius. After all, as academics we mark scripts day after day, year after year. We know where to draw the line between a 2:1 and a first, or a 2:1 and a 2:2, and where something is 58 rather than a 59. That is part of our life. If we cannot do that to ourselves when it comes to research, we are abdicating our responsibility. Of course things are difficult—of course there are unpopular approaches. There are people, not in the mainstream, who could be doing good work. But a peer review mechanism can patiently go through these publications. For at least two summers in 1989 and 2001 or 2002, I sat for a whole month doing nothing but read submissions to the economics panel. The last time it was a glorious summer. I sat in my Hastings house, looking at the sea, unable to go out, and I read close to 500 articles. People on panels put in very serious work. It is important to do that. It is not that the Government are necessarily very generous to academics, but I am grateful for what they give. The taxpayer will not forgive us if we are not accountable for the money we get. We have to show that we make good use of that money. The point of research assessment is that it is a search and reward for excellence. It is not a democratic, popular exercise, where all shall have prizes, as it says in Alice in Wonderland. It is not a game in which all can have prizes. It is a game in which some people are good and get the prizes while the rest just have to try harder next time, and if they do not get a prize, tough luck. I was very impressed when the history panel, either last time or the time before, graded Oxford Brookes University higher than Oxford. That shows that these peer groups are not impressed by age, name or élitism. It is an exercise by people who are active in research to look at their colleagues who are also active in research; it is not in their interest to downgrade people. Obviously there is some game playing. As soon as rules are established, clever people will begin to find a way around them, especially because the funding rules are not transparent in light of the results. People have to play all sorts of games. That is inevitable in any system in which some flexibility is allowed for people to submit. The number of academics who submit, the kind of grouping that is made or where which colleague is placed are all matters of game playing, but that is not a bad thing. I want to say one more thing about different disciplines. It probably makes sense to say that the arts and humanities review board should look after arts and humanities. It probably has a different kind of research culture from natural sciences; it is certainly different from social sciences. Perhaps natural sciences, mathematics and social sciences and the arts should be dealt with under three different systems. That may lead to the problem of interdisciplinarity that the noble Lord, Lord Rees, referred to in his excellent maiden speech. But that is a small problem—it can be handled. It is important, however, to allow for different research areas having a different research culture. In conclusion, life is tough. If you want to be the best, you have to work hard at it. There is absolutely no reason why any consideration should be shown; if we are searching for the best people, they have to show that they are the best.