It might be seen as a theme and variations sung by Florence Foster Jenkins.

On opposite sides of the planet Australia's Development Advisory Group for the Research Quality Framework (RQFDAG), chaired by Chief Scientist Jim Peacock, tries to come up with a workable - let alone useful - model for the RQF while in the UK Chancellor Gordon Brown's determination to scrape the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), its final implementation will begin in 2008, and replace it with a metric based system has universally raised the ire of Britain's academics.

Dr Peacock is due to report the DAG's advice to the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop later this month (October) and he has told The Australian that if it is to go ahead it must begin next year.

He said, "If it's going to be introduced, we need to have it begin on July 1, 2007. That will enable ... all the material to be assembled and reviewed and adjudicated by the fourth quarter of 2008."

He added that it would mean working closely with universities in the first six months of 2007 to trial and hone the methods. As there are just three months left this year, that suggests that the universities better get their running shoes on and get their feet on the starting blocks for a 100 meter sprint.

In her public utterances Ms Bishop has appeared adamant regarding the implementation of an RQF, but its form remains contentious and according to The Australian's Dorothy Illing, "[L]ast week, during a visit to Brisbane to present the University of Queensland's research excellence awards, Dr Peacock seemed equivocal."

He told Ms Illing, "We're [the DAG] attempting to come to a mechanism that keeps things as simple as possible. Because we don't want to load the universities and researchers with a huge job. We're leaving a great deal of freedom to the universities, which is in accord with the EAG [the Expert Advisory Group, predecessor of the DAG]."

And Dr Peacock was giving little away -- or may have been indicating that they are still a long way from having developed concrete proposals -- when he said that the committee had been considering how to measure impact and how metrics could be used by the expert panels. He then went on to say that his group was likely to recommend another expert committee be created for humanities and social sciences, bringing the number of assessment panels to 13. He added that the scores (0-5) for quality and impact would be given separately once the material had been assessed.*

In the meantime -- while Britain's university administrators continued to decry the complexity of that nation's Research Assessment Exercise (on which the RQF is based) -- Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced that the next RAE scheduled to begin in 2008 would be the last in the current format. He would move to have it altered so as to be based on a system of metrics using statistics on universities' research income and journal citations.

Initial disquiet has now become strongly voiced objections.

The Guardian reports, "Groups representing vice-chancellors are adamant that peer review by experts in the field must continue to play a part, although they agree that the current RAE - which involves 82 expert panels - needs reform."

Furthermore, universities have done their sums on the basis of the metric systems proposed by the government and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, and they "don't like the answers".

Writing in Education Guardian in September the UK's higher education minister, Bill Rammell, called on universities to embrace change with "the same creativity and originality of thought that has increasingly distinguished it during the 20 years for which the RAE has been with us". He argued it would lift a bureaucratic burden from academics (our emphasis).

Drummond Bone, the president of Universities UK, which represents all the vice-chancellors, said: "It's clear the current research assessment exercise (RAE) must go after 2008 - it's vital that we think radically about the future of research assessment and funding. But we have real concerns about the models outlined in the consultation. In particular we are worried about an approach that is based solely on research income, and which excludes peer involvement entirely."

And Steve Smith, the vice-chancellor of the University of Exeter and chairman of the 1994 group of small research-intensive institutions, said his organisation strongly supported the government's desire for reform, but this must "strengthen not weaken our ability to demonstrate the excellence of UK research," and the group believes there should be a "basket" of measures of research quality.

Finally, the UK's equivalent of Australia's Group of Eight, the Russell Group, maintains "the RAE provides an internationally-accepted benchmark of research quality, [and] it is essential that any new system carries the same confidence. Until that alternative has been proven, the RAE must continue to obtain. The development of an acceptable UK-wide approach to the assessment and funding of high quality research, which is based more on metrics and which is applicable generally to all disciplines, will require considerable work and testing. The Russell group stands ready to assist with that process, and in doing so is committed to securing a system which combines the intelligent use of metrics with appropriate systems of peer review, to ensure rigour and acceptability."

And with all of the palaver, no one has demonstrated that the RAE as such has been responsible for the significant rise in quality of UK research, No One! And no convincing case by any Australian has been put that the implementation of an RQF will raise the quality of Australian research.

Upgrade (improve) the current mechanisms of peer review by all means and augment research grants so that they carry with them adequate compensation for on costs.

What we seem to be faced with in Australia is a government for what ever reasons, and an over zealous preoccupation with micromanagement of the university sector certainly appears to be one of the principal (principle?) driving forces, is hell-bend on placing yet another managerial bureaucratic layer in place.

Come on, Ms Bishop, for once look at the matter objectively and show some guts in Cabinet.

*The Late Jimmy Rendel, Chief of CSIRO's Division of Animal Genetics, once remarked that if he were to toss a group of exam papers up a set of stairs and grade them on the basis on which step each fell, it might be just as useful as agonising over their content.

Alex Reisner

The Funneled Web