Chairman of the Russell Group of UK Research-led Universities Michael Stirling: RAE is past its sell by date. (March 27, 2006)

    Michael Sterling is the vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham and current chairman of the Russell group of UK research-led universities. Writing in The Guardian last Thursday he comments on the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown's statement to the House of Commons that the Labour Government will scrape the two decades old, Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in favour of a yet to be determined simpler procedure, primarily metric based, no later than beginning in 2008.

According to Professor Stirling:

    Here we have an opportunity to revise an assessment system, which, for some subjects, may be unnecessary. Simplifying the process is long overdue as the RAE is well past its sell by date: it tells neither universities nor government anything we don't already know; it is hugely expensive and massively time consuming.

 

The direct costs of the RAE itself already stand at an acknowledged £40m [A$98m], while estimates suggest the real costs are up to 10 times that much - £400m - because of the amount of academics' time spent in the assessment process, related administration and unproductive gamesmanship.

 

It is my belief that the areas of science, technology, engineering and medicine would be keen to abandon the RAE and use research grants and contract income as a proxy. Government funding might then be awarded on a different basis: an assessment of how successful institutions had been over a track record of research grant and contract income in these key subjects.

 

For many years now, it has been obvious that there is consistently a direct correlation between research grants and contract income and excellence in research.

 

This review gives us the opportunity to stop wasting time and money on the RAE process, at least for some areas.

 

If you look at a league table of RAE ratings and match that with a league table of year on year achievements in research grant and contract income, institutions are mostly in the same place. A new system based on those existing measures is financially and academically robust for many subjects, has an established track record of accuracy, saves millions and saves time.

Whether or not the transporting of Brendan Nelson from Education, Science and Training to Defence to be replaced by Julie Bishop will bring reason to the debate on the Research Quality Framework (RQF) remains to be seen. While it should, the overweening desire of the government to hold the universities and the public research sector in a vice-like micromanaged grip has a high probability of winning the day.