Debate over Scrapping of UK Research Assessment Exercise Continues. (May 7, 2006)

    The scrapping of the UK's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), on which Australia's proposed Research Quality Framework (RQF) is based, has become the subject of critical debate.

The journal Nature reports that proposal to end the RAE, which distributes more than £1 billion (A$2.4 billion) every year to higher-education institutions for core costs such as equipment and salaries, was made this March in the UK budget. The RAE uses peer review based on a selectively grouped complex basis within and between universities.

The UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, argued in his recent budget that a metrics-based approach, under which funding is allocated on the basis of external research income, would be quicker and cheaper to operate.

However, now the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) says that researchers would apply for more grants, driving up administration costs and potentially costing £100 million extra a year, even after savings from scrapping the RAE are taken into account. The report also warns that some universities could see their funding fall by a third under the system.