UK Higher Education Minister Publishes Proposals for Consultation to Replace Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) After 2008. (June 15, 2006)

Graphic: The Guardian

While the Australian Research Quality Framework Development Advisory Group (RQFDAG) chaired by Chief Scientist Jim Peacock continues its prolonged deliberations regarding a preferred model for an RQF, on Tuesday morning (UK) Bill Rammell the UK Minister for Higher Education announced proposals for a new system to replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE and on which the RQF will be patterned) after 2008 with the stated view of reducing bureaucracy and increasing efficiency.

The RAE has taken place every four to five years since 1986 in which the work of every active researcher in British universities is assessed by 67 different subject panels ranging from astrophysics to art history.

According to The Guardian's Natasha Gilbert, "The exercise has for a long time been a thorn in the side of many vice-chancellors and researchers. Universities' main gripe is that the exercise is simply meant to allocate a pot of money, which, for many, represents only a small fraction of their total income, but takes years to prepare for, costs thousands of pounds, and diverts the attention of researchers away from the groundbreaking science they are supposed to be doing... In many vice-chancellors' eyes, a simpler system is well overdue. But many kinks will have to ironed out before the new method is viable. The debate is set to rage for some time to come."

Australia's Labor Opposition having finally come to admit (as though submitting to a root-canal job) that the Dawkinsisation of Australia's higher education system was a rank stupidity, are we about to see yet another governmental idiocy which will cost tens if not hundreds of millions before it is dismantled with trauma comparable to that which the UK's higher education system is now subjected?

Following the Budget announcement by Chancellor Gordon Brown in March that the RAE was to be replaced, a working group, jointly chaired by Professor David Eastwood, Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia and Sir Alan Wilson, Director General for Higher Education at the Department for Education and Skills, was established to propose changes to the existing system, which "would encourage, identify and reward research excellence in higher education."

The five recommendations now put forward by the group are:

1. The 2008 RAE should proceed as planned, but the panels responsible for assessing individual subjects should be able to make greater use of metrics - statistical analysis - alongside or instead of peer review where they think this is appropriate. This will not make it necessary to collect any additional information from institutions.

2. A "shadow" metrics exercise covering all subjects should be run in parallel with the RAE.

3. The metrics used in subjects like science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine should be based largely on external research income. The consultation proposals include a range of models that might be used.

4. Other subjects should use a more differentiated approach which may need to contain an element of peer review and which will be developed from a project currently being taken forward by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

5. This should lead to a combined, predominantly metrics-based, research assessment and funding system to be phased in from 2009/10 in England.

The co-chairman Professor Eastwood said, "..the proposals show... how important it will be for us to continue to be able to benchmark research quality both at UK and at international level in the future."

According to the governmental media release, "The working group comprises representatives of the three UK higher education funding councils for England, Scotland and Wales; the Department for Education and Skills; HM Treasury; the Department of Employment and Learning Northern Ireland and the Department of Trade and Industry. Responses to the consultation are invited by Friday 13 October 2006."