News & Views item - January 2010

 

 

Pro V-C Cambridge Says HEFCE's Proposals Would Turn "First-rate Universities into Second-rate Companies". (January 4, 2009)

Last September TFW reported on initial proposals by the UK government on replacing its Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) with a Research Excellence Framework (REF).

 

We noted that the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) stipulated:

The REF will focus on three elements, which together reflect the key characteristics of research excellence. These are:

Responses from the universities were not slow in coming and a couple of weeks ago, with the deadline for submissions reached, Nature's Natasha Gilbert reported on the less than favourable views from the sector. Among other responses the HEFCE received a petition signed by over 12,000 academics opposing the plan that would assess the economic and social benefits [impact] of research as a major factor in determining who wins a large fraction (more than £1.5 billion (A$2.7 billion)) per year of public university research funding.

 

Ian Leslie, pro-vice chancellor for research at the University of Cambridge, told Nature that he considers the proposals "neither credible nor responsible". And while he agrees that research institutions need to communicate the impact of the research they undertake, nevertheless the HEFCE's proposals would turn "first-rate universities into second-rate companies", and added that it is "irresponsible" to apportion so much funding on the basis of the impact of the research.

 

William Schowalter, a chemical engineer from Princeton University, New Jersey, who was an international judge in the final RAE in 2008 told Ms Gilbert that similar requirements in the United States encourage some researchers to "oversell" the potential impact of their work which can skew funding towards fields such as nanotechnology that promise more immediate benefits, while David Price, vice-provost for research at University College London, told her that any assessment of impact should include benefit to the academic community, and not just the economy and society as currently proposed, to ensure that fields such as mathematics and social sciences are not disadvantaged.

 

The HEFCE is expected to publish a summary of the submissions it received in the second quarter of this year.