Managers and scholars divided as resistance grows to impact agenda - Comments

I've read about Impact now for perhaps a year or more. I've been to events about it, some sponsored by the THE, indeed. I've heard Arts and Humanities people, Social Scientists, Scientists speak about it. I've heard the Research Director of HEFCE. I've talked to colleagues at subject associations, and in universities around the UK. . . . "Impact" has already had more impact on my life than it ever could in an REF entry! And yet, still we have not addressed the fundamental issue: what kind of knowledge do universities support, develop and enhance? And if some of this knowledge has immediate, and immediately discernible "impact" then let us say what it is and how and for what purpose. And then let us define those elements of human knowledge that universities develop and support that do not have immediately discernible impact, and let's outline how important these elements are too, and not prejudice them because of some momentary public policy confusion about higher education. In all: I admire and support the impact debaters, the detractors, even the supporters: but surely the time has now come for policy makers to recognise that the notion was poorly released, that it is not properly defined, and that is not doing the job (already) that it was supposed to do - and will not do that job from the position we are currently in. Place the debate in the longer term strategy, and release the forthcoming REF to truly appreciate and reward excellence!

"but it is very hard for us, from a institutional point of view, to convince researchers" probably because you constantly lie to them.

I cannot speak as to whether or not the idea has been successfully 'sold' to staff here, but the reaction to the REF in general does seem to be very mixed. I am highly against assimilating research and general academic activity to what is essentially the generation of revenue.

I'm proud to go all the way to eleven on the James Ladyman index. Just what are these Chatham House captains of the sector talking about, and how dull do they think people are? Quite obviously, no one opposing the impact agenda is arguing that we should be perfectly happy for academic research to have no impact. On the contrary, we think that it should and does contribute very positively to society, including work done in the arts and humanities, and we're very happy about that. Our claim is that it is not possible to measure and quantify that impact, especially within the very short timeframe of the REF exercise, and especially within the arts and humanities. Consequently, if we insist on including the impact component in the REF, what it will actually be measuring is who can come up with the most elegant and superficially convincing tissue of bullshit. The insinuation that it is only out-of-touch stick-in-the-mud mid-career professors who oppose impact also seems highly suspect to me. What's the evidence for that? Lots of postdocs and early career people I know have signed the Ladyman petition. More generally, why won't these very important and powerful people own their own comments, rather than hiding behind rules of secrecy? Due to their positions of power, they surely can't be concerned that anything bad might come of it for them if we knew who had said what. Instead, one can't help suspecting that they are well aware that if we knew who they were they would find it harder to make baseless and disingenuous assertions, because they'd soon find themselves embarrassed when people called them on them.

'One suggestion put forward for managing those radically opposed to impact was "to take a large number of academics into a room and ask them to put their hand up if they wish their work to have no impact whatsoever ... I have yet to see a hand."' So: opposition to the "impact agenda" implies that one is entirely indifferent to the actual impact of one's research. This disingenuous non-sequitur is typical of the managerial cretins who are trying to impose this nonsense. It's exactly the same verbal manipulation that leads US politicians to name their legislative proposals "the Patriot Act" or "No Child Left Behind." Opponents are at an immediate rhetorical disadvantage: "You're not a patriot? You want to leave some of the children behind?" I work on the dialogues of Plato. The only impact I can hope this research to have is an improvement in our understanding of a great philosopher. In any decent US university -- which these people claim to want to emulate in so much -- this would be sufficient, as a kind of aspiration, to put me in fair competition with other researchers for funding. But according to the ideology of the "impact agenda," my prospective funding should immediately be slashed by 25%, because I cannot demonstrate a quantifiable positive social or economic impact. Message: If you want to work on Plato, go to the US. I need hardly add that the same applies to an enormous amount of intellectually valuable research (eg pure mathematics). The likely destructive consequences of these insane proposals should frighten anyone who cares about UK universities.

I think that the Impact debate highlights an important gap between managers and academics. From an academic point of view, the concept epitomises all that is mendacious in politics and management - the insistence on using Impact as a yardstick, when it is poorly designed, there is no clear way it actually could be defined sufficiently for the application of metrics without missing out important ingredients (e.g. long-term impact, secondary and sometimes unintended benefits - which can on occasions dwarf the original and intended benefit) - all points to a kind of decision-making that is simply alien to academics; based on speculative declarations with little substantiation. What governemnts and management are actually saying, then, is that they wish academics would simply evaporate, there should be no such thing as this quaint concept of academia, only business. So, how's this? - it's common, when one finds difficulty measuring something, to measure instead something which is amenable and is close coupled to it. So, if we can't measure impact of research, would we actually be able to at least get an idea of it by looking at what happens if you simply stop all research? - the impact of lack-of-impact, as it were. No, that doesn't really help, does it?

I think the key issue here is how impact will be measured, specifically in what timeframe. Given the desire of government to measure everything in very short (i.e. political) timeframes, I think those who are concerned are right to be. Much of Newton's work did not have immediate commercial 'impact' for many years, decades and in some cases centuries after he completed it. Yet surely there is no-one who would deny the profound impact his work has had. The best thing to do would be to evaluate any proposed 'impact' measures against the most significant research of the past and determine whether, under the 'impact' rules, the greatest researchers would have received funding. If we find, as I suspect we might, that Einstein, Newton, Watson and Crick and others would 'fail' the impact test, then there is a very real need to think again.

Or we could put all these Chatham House-armoured dudes in room, and ask them to put up their hands if they argree with the statement that "universities are about increasing and transmitting human knowledge". Academics would have to be as dim as this lot seem to be to think it was acceptable to allocate 25% of the total QR funding on the basis of an undefined and untested system. This is an old, old rhetorical trick: we are the realists, academics do not not understand. My magic is stronger than your magic.

I find the comments of the 25 "senior figures" rude, bulling, simplistic and overall outrageous. Is this all the proponents of the "impact" can come up with? How can they possibly expect us to buy into their agenda after spouting such insensitive nonsense? Time for a revolution.

I'd like to share the following in order to make clear that also early career people (I'm in the third year of a PhD in Philsophy) are **not** in agreement with the core ideas of the 'impact agenda'. A couple of weeks ago, the Graduate School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Bristol advertised the meeting 'Bright Ideas - Innovations & the Arts'. The information on the leaflet read as follows: "New ideas, new connections and seizing opportunities are all critical elements in producing ground-breaking research and in delivering impact from that research. This half-day event is all about doing things a little differently to produce really valuable results. Come along and find out more about how enterprise can transform your research and your career prospects." "Enigmatic" I thought, but I didn't realised straight away the link between the event and the 'impact agenda'. When later, it was pointed out to me that the event was indeed part of the 'impact agenda', my curiosity about what these people had to say to young researchers grew exponentially. The fact that lunch was kindly offered did the rest of the job for convincing me to attend. I don't mean to give a report here, but I'd just like to point at a few **deeply misguided** messages that were conveyed during the meeting. 1) "Commercial entrepreneurs" and "Intellectual entrepreneurs" share the same goals. Now, apart from the fact that, the italian (my mother tongue) translation of 'entrepreneur' ('imprenditore') makes me cringe, since it inevitably - at least in Italy - refers to Berlusconi, I find that claim just false. Indeed, "Commercial entrepreneurs" (name such as Richard Branson and Alan Sugar were given) have one goal, i.e. money. Usually the method to reach that does not matter, as long as it delivers the result. However, what usually "Commercial entrepreneurs" mean by 'money' is in fact 'accumulation of money' and so they get stuck in a circle where they just accumulate more money. Now this may sound a very naive or unrealistic view about "Commercial entrepreneurs", but wait, the best is still coming. "Intellectual entrepreneurs", whatever one may define them, on the other hand, should be committed to a methodologically clear (the method **does** matter) enquiry into truth, which usually would involve a systematic accumulation of knowledge. Anything would **not** do, they should like truth! It's just not about finding "your niche in the market of ideas"!! 2) Good research must be "Socially valuable" First, this is just very vague. Second, how on Earth is it supposed to be measured? When pressed on this question, one of the speaker of the meeting said something like "There aren't any computationally accurate matrix to measure it at the moment". What? I don't think he was very clear himself about the issue, but I might be wrong. 3) Analytical and critical thinking/creative thinking Dichotomy This idea was supported with claims on the line of "It's too easy to tear apart ideas. How about instead *really* contributing to the process of creating ideas? After all, the more ideas the more likely is to find good ones among them" Now, everyone with some academic experience would know that that's just a load of old bollocks: Maths is analytic and creative for instance. Furthermore, NOT ANY IDEA WOULD DO!! Funds are *not* supposed to be allocated to people just because they can cook up nice stories. I could go on even more, but I'll stop here instead. According to me, GOOD research should be as free from constraints as possible. I've always thought that one of the goal of academia was to guarantee that. Sorry for the long rant, Simone Duca

Well said, Simone. The anonymous claim that "The problem is not with the young people who are starting out or early-career researchers, but there is a middle territory which has rather lost the plot" is interesting. Firstly, it is of course a typically imprecise formulation, evidence-free (as you demonstrate). Implication: anyone who is not in favour of the new order is reactionary, fuddy-duddy, unrealistic or (gratuitous insult from sneering senior manager) has "lost the plot". So that's all right then. Won't have to listen to them. Anyone who thinks there isn't a "them and us" mentality in HE, or who still imagines that people like these upstanding "senior figures" are on the side of science and scholarship, needs to read this THE account.

Quite. Alternative interpretation: young people and early career researchers are, on the whole, in far too insecure a position to risk disagreeing openly with the agenda being pushed by government and senior management; the troublesome 'middle territory' are sufficiently well established to express dissent. Of course, the fact that we even contemplate the possibility of more than one interpretation of the available evidence, some of which may not wholly support the onwards and upwards enterprise agenda, is a clear sign that we're untrustworthy and divorced from the real world.

Incidentally, I expect there are other readers finding themselves less than reassured about the impact agenda by the thought that some anonymous powerful people are wildly enthusiastic about it, for no good reason they've been able to intelligibly articulate. If so, and you haven't already done so, why not score yourself a slight increase in your personal ranking on the James Ladyman Index (also known as the Academic Sanity Index) and go and sign the petition on the Number 10 website:- http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/REFandimpact/

The way we scholars are being treated in this country is simply disgusting. Our research is looked down upon in contempt. Everything is about money. Universities are no longer universities, they are money-making institutions. Something has to be done. I have decided not to include the name of my university in any of my publications, which I write in my personal time (weekends and evenings) and I finance with my money. I encourage everyone to do the same

Generally I dislike arguments from authority in scientific discussions. But this isn't really a scientific argument. It is an argument between people who have had some success in research and a lot of managers who haven't had success in research, but nevertheless think they can give lessons to Nobel prizewinners in how to do it. The managers are about as insensitive as homeopaths to matters of evidence and measurement, and show a similar fondness for ill-defined buzzwords. Anyone here who uses Twitter might consider using the hashtag #impactbollocks

Just to add my voice to the chorus. On what basis are the Chatham House 25 saying that early career researchers support the impact agenda? As one myself, I'm not happy with it. (And part of the unhappiness is: if the funders want to increase overall social relevance of academic research, I can think of so many better ways of achieving it than the current hamfisted proposal). I hope they were quoted out of context, because otherwise I despair of the quality of discussion going on among "senior sector" figures. Really, honestly, looking themselves in the eye in the mirror in morning, do they think the complaints are solely from people who would like their research to have zero impact? It's incredibly disrespectful. "proud to go all the way to eleven on the James Ladyman index".

Purporting to speak in another's name (in this case early career researchers) is one of the oldest trcisk in the book to shore up a fradulent sense of the legitimacy and value of one's ideas. I am (or was) an early carrer researcher and, given that my work touched on the various fantasies that underpin neoliberal ideology and practice in particuar sites (global governance in my case, but you could very easily study university management along exactly the same lines), my research would be deemed to "lack impact" - i.e. it threatens the entrenched, comfortable positions of well-paid but utterly clueless senior management types, and thus "lacks impact".

I can't see an intellectual argument developing here, other than 'kicking the cat'. If you're spending taxpayers' money on your research during an economic crisis, just at the point when a massive amount of s**t is about to hit the fan in HE funding cuts, you need justify the value of your research to the public good. This value is not 'intrinsic'. I'm sure the public good can be much enriched by understanding more about Plato but that's not going to happen if only seven people read about it in some dusty journal. Why would anyone have a problem with providing an impact plan when asking for public money in grants? Surely we all strive to generate new knowledge and to disseminate that knowledge as widely as possible to greatest effect.

By the way, does everyone get the chronology here? Because it's actually pretty funny. When the Anonymous Captains of Whatever were aping their political masters by smearing James L as a jaded mid-career researcher, it hadn't yet been revealed that the blinkered, plot-losing opponents of the Impact Agenda included ten Nobel laureates and twenty-six fellows of the Royal Society! "I have completely bought in to the impact agenda ... but it is very hard for us to convince researchers." Mmmm. Memo to Captains: "Now that you see who the unconvinced researchers really are, maybe it's time to reconsider the original decision to *completely* buy in? If, on the other hand, you'd like to pick a public fight with the laureates and fellows about the true nature and point of academic research, please go ahead: I imagine the results might be instructive for everyone." These jackasses are supposed to be guardians of our intellectual culture and themselves have a massive impact on our working lives, but they can barely rub two ideas together and can't even practice the dark arts without performing the improbable contortion of stabbing themselves in the back.

@Paul. The argument you put forward - which is the well-worn HEFCE/RCUK/BIS response to criticism of the impact agenda - has been previously addressed many times and in quite some depth. See "http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~leslie/impact/impact.html" for a list of the appropriate papers. Let's, for a moment, turn the impact issue on its head and consider whether a focus on short-term impact might actually *reduce* return (in the broadest possible sense) on taxpayers' investment. For example, is sinking large sums of public money into the private sector - be it via PFI, to the bankers, or through university-industry "strategic" partnerships involving multinational corporations (and boosted by the RCUK/HEFCE focus on economic impact) - always in the best interests of the taxpayer? Is a focus on short-term market impact and entrepreneurship in academia actually in the best interests of the taxpayer? (Particularly if there is little or no market for the products developed by the spin-off companies that RCUK/HEFCE/BIS are so keen that we set up!). In any case, and despite HEFCE/RCUK claims to the contrary, this is not about responding to taxpayers' concerns. Have you seen evidence that the general public is clamouring for academics to put aside exploration, discovery, and curiosity-driven research to focus on near-market product development and R&D? (Perhaps I missed the headlines in the Mail?) The impact agenda is *entirely* about ensuring alignment with government policy. (And Mandelson's "vision" of a business-led academy clearly indicates just which part of "socio-economic impact" is of most concern to BIS and, therefore, RCUK and HEFCE). Kudos to Zoe Corbyn for giving us this fascinating insight into the muddled thinking of "senior sector figures". Whatever happened to "speaking truth unto power"?

I'm not happy at having a previous commentator lecture us about how we must justify the use of taxpayers money as though we were some form of low life social pariah! Just don't get me started on how tax payers have been bounced into supporting the failure of private financial managers who were relentlessly following the same goals that are now being waved at us! ANGRY!

Hi, Angry. Just to clarify, are you angry at my lecture on justification of taxpayers' money or Paul's lecture above?! I hope it's clear from my lecture that I'm just as angry as you about the abuse of public money in supporting private financial managers! Philip

The concern that academics have is not about whether their research has impact on other individuals (or society as a whole) as is implied by the members of the Chatham House Group, but how such impact is measured. Research conducted on Aristotle or Kant or Wittgenstein may appear to be irrelevant or totally 'academic' to those measuring impact, but it might spark someone else into another area of research which, in turn, ignites other's thoughts, etc. Research done for its own sake does have an impact, it's just impossible (with the resources and timescale that is being proposed) to quantify exactly how. That is the problem.

oh, i’d love to rant about the esoteric nature of some of academia’s blossoms (which, at times, gives me the impression the author himself didn’t understand entirely what he wrote), the scholarly habit—or rather demand—of endlessly reciting maculature (after all, this defines the scholarliness of the product) and, yes, the limited reach—or let’s call it ‘impact’—of scholarly debate into stratas below and above in the caste system (hm, is that actually what the chatham house folks want?). and yes, i’d love to rave about that curious reflection of dominant ideology in scholarly production (of what use is academic freedom, if you don’t use it?!). but what it comes down to is whether my liberty is worth £3.50 today. what does putting an exchange value on ideas do to the ideas? ‘the human is only entirely human where he plays,’ an exceptionally hard-working academic with an immense impact on society decreed some two hundred years ago. play means being removed from the necessity of creating exchange value. if ideas such as liberty are what makes us human, shouldn’t we be happy to play? if play, in a societal form, is a waste of tax payers money, my liberty today is worth £3.50. with regard to the timing that ideas require to take some effect, some academics who made a indelible impact such as kant or frege were dead by the time their ideas became the coinage of discourse. the logic of the day trade, which makes any long-term investment seem non-sensical, surely would have killed them before they even set the pen to the paper. finally, what’s the impact of the current business valuation? the breathless imperative of market performance, which has emerged as the principal creation of economic value, has spelled ecological disaster for our planet (which, incidentally, is also an economic catastrophe) and might take humanity to the brink of extinction. is your life, or that of your children, worth £3.50, or how much that stock or bond has gained today (if it didn’t plunge to unforeseen depths, that is)? perhaps it’s time business learns from the humanities instead of trying to colonize the latter with its short-sighted assessments of value. the ideas of schiller, kant and frege are still around after two hundred years. yesterday’s profit evaporates with melting polar caps. the arctic ice is supposed to be gone next summer.

dear editor, do you suppose your readership cannot articulate thoughts as structured as to require paragraph breaks? sincerely, e. preuss

As a mid-career researcher I have to point out that I *have* bought into the impact agenda. There are certainly questions around how to measure it, and there obviously must be a place for 'blue skies' thinking, especially in the physical sciences. But as an economist, I've always wanted my research to be both relevant (including in relation to policy) and practical. I think it is, and am happy to be judged against impact metrics, whatever these might turn out to be.

What a shame Hegel, when filling in his AHRC funding application, couldn't see into the future and claim that one day his lectures on history would feed into the forces that would eventually produce the Russian Revolution. Or that Wagner, applying for leave to write Parsifal, couldn't assure the AHRC review panels that his ideas and music would one day be highly congenial to Hitler and thus help to bring about WW2! How's that for Impact? Politicians would do rather well out of it. When you consider the Impact their decisions have, maybe funding councils should be asking us to prove our research will not have any life-threatening consequences and will be 100% harmless, benefiting only human knowledge and understanding.

To Philip Moriarty - To clarify, I cerntainly got your message and accept we sing from the same hymn sheet. My remarks were directed to Paul who I felt went too far in suggesting we should be hauled over the coals of value for money and transparency. This at a time when other parts of our society consume exponential amounts of public cash with little or no accountability. When did any of us last bring a society to its knees?

Well, I thought Paul's point was interesting! Actually, Plato said plenty that was (eventually to become) entirely relevant to advanced technological implementations, neuroscientific studies and, of course, ethical discourse. But, what Paul is asking is whether one should have to be an academic and a salesman? - is the business of the academic as much about dissemination as it is about discovery? I'm reminded of the difference in thinking between academics and businesspeople. Once a year, some chaps from our business opportunities unit wander round in fine, powerful charcoal grey suits (with red ties, of course) asking academics (who appear almost indistinguishable from students, delivery drivers and so on) about the spin-out possibilities. They think we must have, in the 12 months since the last visit, come up with at least something they can flog. Naturally, we answer quite positively: "this could lead to a revolutionery new power supply" "this might produce images in a noisy environment of a resolution and scale we previously thought impossible" "here we are heading toward a method of displaying massive datasets in an intuitive way" "we're hoping to be able to measure complex multifactorial emotional states" and so on. But the business guys are inevitably disappointed that we don't have a nicely packaged product all ready for market, complete with studies of market potential and price point. They go away, shaking their heads at the unworldly head-in-the-clouds academics. of course, I've tried chasing after them to explain that we don't directly do products, we do science, and that i'm sure there's good stuff i there, it just needs some business bods to take it from the string-and-cardboard stage to the proper product stage. It never grabs them, though. Now, likewise, is the person who does the research and the person who disseminates the research necessarily the same? Surely, the person that assesses impact should be a specialist? - otherwise, you're just asking for some amateur utterances which, let's face it, probably won't be worth the paper it's written on?

There are only three possible responses to the latest round of managerial interference into and mismanagement of what was once, and without doubt, one of the greatest higher educational systems in the world (and I say this as a foreigner who worked her butt off as a student to get into it): - collective disbedience and refusal to comply with any aspect of this rubbish - immigration - early retirement

I'm not surprised mid-career researchers have bought into the impact agenda. Other things being equal, research by established researchers has a higher impact. It is more likely to be published, cited and indeed to influence policy - after all, not many postdocs have access to the policymaker's ear.

"Research conducted on Aristotle or Kant or Wittgenstein may appear to be irrelevant or totally 'academic' to those measuring impact, but it might spark someone else into another area of research which, in turn, ignites other's thoughts, etc" INTERESTING. I once wrote a good pysics paper that was inspired by watching two drunks in a bar beat the living daylights out of each other. But, I would hardly propose that such actvity be funded (or even encouraged) on that basis.

"I can't see an intellectual argument developing here, other than 'kicking the cat'. If you're spending taxpayers' money on your research during an economic crisis, just at the point when a massive amount of s**t is about to hit the fan in HE funding cuts, you need justify the value of your research to the public good. " Good to see a bit of common senses here. Most academic are engaged in "research" activities that are not and will never be of any use to anyone. SOME of that sort of thing can be funded when times are good, but NOW? And it doesn't help their case when they all suddenly want to claim or imply that they are the next Kant, Einstein, Nobel Prize winners, etc.

“One suggestion put forward for managing those radically opposed to impact was "to take a large number of academics into a room and ask them to put their hand up if they wish their work to have no impact whatsoever ... I have yet to see a hand," the speaker said.” This argument is fatuous in numerous ways. Most conspicuously, it ignores HEFC’s own small print which tells us: “we do not intend to include impact through intellectual influence on scientific knowledge and academia”. And impact on teaching is to count only in restricted ways which do not include impact on the “content” of teaching. I’d like to suggest taking a large number of doctors into a room and asking them how they feel about having their performance assessed on the basis of the impact of their work, but making it clear that “impact” here is not to include the prevention and treatment of illness. Or perhaps policeman could be assessed on their impact on society but expressly excluding their impact on the prevention and detection of crime. I cannot comment on other disciplines, when it comes to academic excellence in my own area of philosophy, the United Kingdom can credibly be said to come second in the world only to the United States. There are not many spheres of activity left where the UK ranks top 2 in the world and it would a shame to mess things up. We can hope to stay that way by having an academic culture that is focused on (as Tony Blair might have put it): three things: research quality, research quality and research quality. The more we do to sustain a focused culture of excellence, the more confident we can be confident that impact will take care of itself. The more we dilute our preoccupation with excellence with hair-brained agendas cooked up by Whitehall hacks with too much time on their hands, the more we confident we can be of having very little impact indeed. A lot of philosophy certainly has impact. The work of the American philosopher John Rawls in the early 1970s has had massive impact on social and political thought way beyond academia. The work of Gottlob Frege and other pioneers of modern logic around the turn of 20th century is the reason there is a computer on your desk. But if anyone had set out, a few years after the first publication to measure such impact outwith they would have found, in the case of Rawls, virtually nothing and in the case of Frege, precisely nothing. The main likely consequence of the so-called impact agenda will be that academics will spend considerably less time doing academic research and considerably more engaged in meaningless efforts to measure and document the “impact” of their work. The result will be, exactly as Seiriol Morgan observes, elegant and superficially convincing tissues of bullshit.

Dr Truth: you have a strange way of missing the point (I'd like to think, deliberately, because the alternative is even more worrying). "Most academic[s] are engaged in "research" activities that are not and will never be of any use to anyone." The whole point is: how do you know? What a lot of people on this thread have been saying is precisely that we do NOT know in advance whether what might look useless, is in fact useless. No-one as far as I can see claims to be Kant or a Nobel prize-winner in what is said here. What they do point out, time and again, and what you either don't want to see or can't see, though God knows why because it really isn't too hard to grasp, is that the work of those people would not have been highly scored in terms of impact when it was produced. Impact is not predictable. That as far as I can see is the main reason why many academics object to the idea of measuring it and funding research on the basis of an umeasurable.

I vote for collective disobedience!

"Impact is not predictable". TRUE. That is why the request is for past impact, not what the impact might be. The proposal is not one for funding any warm body that claims they might do something useful in the future---as we can see from this blog, that would be just about every academic---but one to fund those who have already shown that they can do useful things. As it is, a great deal of funding is already made on the basis of "track record", and "impact" would be just another dot-point in that record. Money is tight and must be spent wisely; so I would, for example, cut off all research funding to the humanities until those who do useful things manage to turn things around.

Trotter to "Truth": impact won't be just another dot-point (whatever that is). It will be 25% of the total QR funding. That is one mighty big spondulick-laden dot. Let's assume I have "already shown I can do useful things" (as you put it, though obviously I won't ever do anything useful in your myopic view of things because I work in humanities and as we know, only that of which Dr Truth approves, gets the dosh). Why on earth should my department be prospectively funded in 2013 for five years into the future on the basis of something "useful" which I did in oh I don't know 1995 or even for that matter 2005? Though the latter is highly unlkely because (and I won't go on about this because I'm beginning to have serious doubts that you bother to read anything) it takes longer than that. You say that "a great deal of funding is already made on the basis of "track record" ..." but that is absolutely not treu in the RAE except for the period of the review itself. If you wrote nothing between 2001 and 2007, you could have won the Nobel prize in 2000, but for the RAE2008 you had no outputs = no QR (in respect of outputs) on your behalf.

Where are Philip Moriarty and Carl May when we need them?

What a bunch of jokers !! I write a great article 1 year/2 years. I wait for a referee report 1 year = reject. I resubmit to a journal 1 year later = reject Finally, I resubmit to a top journal 1 year later accept ( after revision)!. Now 4 year laters I am asked to assess its impact !!!!!!! What a bunch of Jackasses !!

Trotter scribbles: "Why on earth should my department be prospectively funded in 2013 for five years into the future on the basis of something "useful" which I did in oh I don't know 1995 or even for that matter 2005?" IS THAT A SERIOUS QUESTION? You want to know why someome with an excellent track record (PAST TENSE) should be given money to do something (FUTURE TENSE)? What world are you living in?

"you could have won the Nobel prize in 2000, but for the RAE2008 you had no outputs = no QR (in respect of outputs) on your behalf." I doubt that any Nobel Prize winner is starved for funding. Once again, I must remind whiners here to stop implying that they are in one super-league or another; most are simply objecting to the prospects of their snouts being pulled out of the feeding trough.

Someone further up the thread uses the spectre of the Daily Mail, asking are its readers clamouring for 'impact.' Those that live by the Mail can die by the Mail, as a man I much respected once told me. I would hazard a guess that the Mail reader on the Clapham omnibus would actually, if asked, quite like impact. The problem with impact is not per se impact - it is that the current proposals are just not clear. My background is in pure mathematics which has little direct, short-term impact, but over a very long period is exploited to great impact. I have no idea how contributions could be separated in any meaningful way. That being said - academics are not the ones who need to ask the public, in a deep recession, for a few billion to keep the show going. The problem with the comments here is not the opposition it impact. It is the sense that academics are rapidly heading down the road that doctors did - a profession that moaned and whined so much that everyone just stopped caring. A profession that looked (and in some cases, was) detached with a pretty nasty sense of entitlement. I would hate to see that happen to a profession I have thought highly of for two decades.

@Dara: you say you are working in pure mathematics. How would you like to be forced to work in applied mathematics in order for your department to have more impact? Wouldn't you be slightly tempted to moan, at least a little bit? I know I would.

KarinD - I wouldn't like it at all, however that does not mean that the impact agenda has no relevance or application to pure mathematics does it? What I am getting at is that my view is that academics are not best served by giving out the message that they want to be given cash and left alone. That may misrepresent the above, and I am sorry if some are put out - but that is how it comes across. Impact is a legitimate concern to those who fund academics - I am sorry, but that is inescapable. Instead of going off on one, what is needed is thinking about how credible gauges of impact can be presented. If pure mathematics is a pain, think how English Lit academics are going to get on! My point is not to defend impact as such, what I am getting at is that impact is real and it is something that those who fund universities are entitled to look at. Denial of that serves no one.

I am sorry to keep scribble, Dr Truth,although an unintended impact (and benefit) seems to be that I have managed to annoy you. I don't quite see why opposition to a scientifically silly policy has to be classified as whining. And your suggestion that I am implying I'm in a super-league is gratuitous and downright silly. I think you'd better get back to the bar, and let's hope this time the drunks decide to have a more direct impact.

Dear Dr. Truth, I agree that much of academia is useless and most of the humanities at that. Yet, academia shares this distinction with the most revered institutions of contemporary society. Industry, for the greater part, churns out completely useless consumer commodities. (Really, who needs all this junk? It’s only there for throwing away, so we can buy something new and keep the jittery markets happy.) The military, its well-paid ranks and its state of the art weaponry cannot subdue Vietnamese, Afghans or Iraqis fighting with little more than their bare teeth. Or the school system with all its expenditures and experts, which produces minds scoring up to 50 percentiles below their cheaply and amateurly homeschooled peers. What sets academia apart from the rest is that it is relatively harmless. It doesn’t bury our planet in waste and overheats it through the dispensable use of energy. It does not send other civilizations back to the Stone Age and does not shred babies into minced meat with cluster bombs. It does not dumb down the general population to become mindless consumers and willy-nilly political subjects, making a mockery of the democratic system. If, as you say, ‘money is tight and must be spent wisely’, then why don’t we simply do so? With ‘cutting of funding to the humanities’, as you suggest, you not only start with the least expensive item, but also with the least damaging. ‘Money is tight’ for a reason, and academia is not a part of that. Look at the list above and you see where the money goes. By saying that much of academia and most of the humanities is useless I do not mean all, and I am sure you will agree with that. Do you have crystal ball to see what ideas growing on the academic playing field will bloom and be fertile? A Kant or a Frege would have, as I already pointed out, been nixed by the ‘impact standard’—their impact notwithstanding. ‘Cut funding to the humanities’ and the future will be barren. Sincerely, Evelyn Preuss

paragraph breaks please!

Arguments such as your show exactly what is wrong with the academics: Out there, the people with the money are demanding to know how their money has been and will be used. Rather than wake up to the dawning reality, the response from academics is to whinge, moan, and think of a million unhelpful arguments, all of which only serve to reinforce the need to haul academics into the world they supposedly live in. Let me try to help: (a) there are funding cuts coming; (b) individuals and universities that can the ability to use money wisely will be spared the brunt of the cuts. Whinge and moan, by all means, but also think of a Plan B.

evelyn preuss - 'What sets academia apart from the rest is that it is relatively harmless.' Well..... One thing about impact that no one seems to have thought about is whether impact has to be positive. I would argue that the greatest impact over the past two years is from the person who came up with derivatives risk modelling and monoline insurance profiles. Similarly, take chemistry - I would say that there is great scope for impact in chemical weapons. As your post amply demonstrates the greatest impact of humanities over the past few years has been the development of self-loathing internet strops which have had a severely deleterious effect on our media.

Undoubtedly Dr Truth is correct that cuts are imminent. And I don't agree with Evelyn Preuss about defending humanities because they are cheap and harmless. So's knitting. The future would or will be barren without the humanities, not least because there is a continuing need to understand not just that future but perhaps more pressingly, the past, the study of which can actually be quite easily 'sold'. I'm not about to be lectured to by Dr Truth about impact or my responsibilities to the taxpayer: I am very conscious that I have been consuming taxpayers' money for a long time now, both in terms of my salary and in terms of research grants, and it is as far as I am concerned a given that we should do try to make what we do of value to society beyond academia. I have spent hundreds of hours doing just that. Whether the impact of this effort is measurable, is another matter altogether; and to subordinate my research to so intangible an outcome would be not responsiveness to the taxpayer, but irresponsibility because that isn't primarily what I was funded to do. My other point is more general. Since the early 1980s, the exasperated voices of the Dr Truths of the university world have been very strident and they have often been the voices of our so-called leaders in all this (which is where this discussion started). It has not been a matter of speaking truth to power so much as trading (and traducing) truth for power. For all the Daily Mail sermonizing we get subjected to, and at which Dr Truth is such a dab hand, this is in fact a profoundly corrosive form of intellectual dishonesty. We have been propelled head-first into a bureaucratic Elbonian quagmire of asinine regulation and interference such that a huge proportion of academic time is misspent on distractions from the job in hand; and now into a situation where universities are apparently seriously considering remodelling their research agenda to meet the short-sighted and often ignorant requirements of business and politicians who claim to be able to do things which leading scientists are repeatedly telling them are impossible. (And no, Dr Truth, I don't count myself amongst their number, but I am capable of understanding the calibre of people like Moriarty, May and Colquhoun.) Dr Truth and his ilk cry "realism". He may have recourse to telling us we're whingeing and moaning. These are just cheap insults: resistance is whingeing, criticism is moaning, Has he not read or heard of "la trahison des clercs"? It’s very revealing that the anonymous senior figures talk about “buying into” this agenda. They're wrong: they haven’t bought in, they’ve sold out.

The wake-up bell has rang. If academics wish to even stand a chance in what's coming, I suggest waking up. Long-winded arguments about the quality of the brass from which the bell was made, how clear the sound was, whether the ringing was at the right time or by the person, that people have been known to wake up without bells being rang... are unhelpful. WAKE UP!

Dr Truth: You may not like the arguments, but you don't seem able to do much of a job of answering them. Since when was capitalization a substitute for thought? I suppose it is a variant on the stereotypical Englishman abroad: shout louder.

David Trotter - To be clear, I am not getting at you, so please don't go off at me. I am sure that everything you put in your comment is true to a greater or lesser extent, however there is a clear tension in the heart of what you say. You comment that you are cognisant of the imperatives of 'serving' (I wish I could think of another word) the taxpayer that funds you. In the next breath you appear to suggest that your impact and measuring it is something of a burden. I, and most others, do not think that you are playing fast and loose with tax money - far from it. My view is that the REF/RAE is not the best place to gauge impact, but surely you must see that wider accountability demands some measure, and some thought on your part? What worries me about these threads is not so much what they say - no one seems to be saying that impact is a bad thing, just not on the REF's terms. However what is emerging is a rather creepy collective group think that hectors and kicks at any even slightly dissenting voice. Like it or not, academic freedom does have a cost and at some stage the impact of that freedom should be looked at. This is exactly what happened with doctors (and teachers in a different way). Lots of keyboard warriors, lots of threats and lots of internet froth - but when it came to it, it was all froth and no beer. The doctors believed their own hype and forgot that looking good and being good are not the same thing, Impact in the REF is not great - but then neither is the spectacle of stroppy academics demanding money with menaces on a popbitch website. Money demands accountability and I can not see why academics seem to be taking the view that they are something of a special case.

Dr Truth (I take it): Well, we seem to be getting somewhere now. I'm perfectly happy actually with "serving" the taxpayer (or better: society). But "stroppy academics demanding money with menaces on a popbitch website"? You've lost me there. As has been pointed out on innumerable occasions here and elsewhere, academics are pretty accountable for just about everything they do, including for the research money they get through either QR or RCUK. A couple of months ago, I was written to about a grant I had (for £2300!) in 2003, to ask for an update on any further publications arising from it. It's fine by me if statistics are collated on who does what for how much, and it is at least perfectly straightforward -- but it does gives a flavour of the sort of accountability which is already in operation. So arguing that opposition to (even REF-style) impact measurement = refusal to be accountable is a pretty flimsy straw man. As to impact: yes, I have thought about it, quite a lot in fact, but I'm getting nowhere fast. I think we could develop measures but I really do not see what the timescale is going to be and I genuinely do not believe that we will be best serving the interests of the taxpayer by succumbing to the short-termism which the proposed mechanism implies.

No, that was not me. Given that we live in extraordinary times, requiring strong and direct action, my message is more direct: cut off funding to time-wasting disciplines, fire parasite academics (who believe we owe them a living), strongly rein in unaccountable academic pests (e.g. one Trotter), etc.

@To David Trotter: I owe you a sincere apology for confusing you with the disagreeable Dr Truth. I should have realized that your post was far too well-reasoned to come from him. @Dr Truth: welcome back -- that's a more familiar tone. "Strong and direct action", eh? Now where have we heard that before, Obersturmbannführer Truth?

David Trotter - I was the person who wrote the earlier comment, I write on here as Dara and in error I forgot to identify myself - apologies. I mentioned earlier that the problem I have with REF impact is more about it having a differing effect on different disciplines. The unspoken on here of course is that I can very easily see some discpilines wanting impact to be weighted at greater than 25%. Things like pure mathematics do have an impact- the PageRank algorithm for example, often at many years removed and not in isolation. Impact has a place, the clear undertone of the thread above is that some just want to totally disengage and feel measurement of impacts has no place in funding. Working in in the context of disciplines with the organisations that ask the taxpayer for a few billion would, to my mind, be more credible than coming onto talkboards and getting it all off the collective chest. But what I am seeing here is a path well trodden by doctors in particular. It would be wonderful if money came with no strings or wider concerns, but academics have to treat the world as it is, not as they would wish it to be. And I do worry that in all the froth, academics are heading for a fall. I for one would hate to see that.

Dara -- thank you. I don't think we are basically at odds. Mathematicians and humanities scholars often have a lot in common. I'm a medieval French specialist and actually, yes, I think we do have some impact (for example, medieval French had a huge impact on the development of English, and I guess I could show how that matters and indeed, I have tried to do so at http://www.anglo-norman.net/dissem/ ...). The problem is: how long did the PageRank algorithm take to be measurable in "impact" terms? Or: how long will it take before a different view of the history of English matters to anyone except academics? I think money probably should come with some strings attached. But ... how long is the piece of string?

David Trotter - Thank you for your reply. Yes, in short. The PageRank algorithm (aka Google) has probably had the biggest impact of many academic developments, it just is not impact in the terms of the REF. It took decades. The problem with the impact agenda is just that the REF is not the place for it - the impact agenda has very little wrong with it. Medieval French is studied for a reason - the terms of that need to be spelled out, just not in the REF. What I am against is the knee-jerk internet froth. Those academics are against impact basically because they think they don't have one. So I find myself in an odd position, yes to impact, no to it being in the REF - frankly I can't reconcile that. But I'm not going to flaunt the chip on the academic shoulder as too many others have done.

"medieval French had a huge impact on the development of English". I suspect the REF will be interested in more recent times. But good luck anyway!

@Dara We all agree that research ought to have impact. I am sure that a lot of research in pure mathematics will end up having a huge impact, but how can one tell in advance which it will be? Research on prime numbers didn't have much of an application for thousands of years until prime numbers were used to encrypt e-mail messages (I think; I may be wrong). Some pure mathematics research, perhaps most of it, may never be of any use at all. I suspect trying to determine in advance which part of the pure mathematics research is going to be useful would be a waste of time. Of course, the result of this reasoning may be that one ought to give up all research in pure mathematics and concentrate funds on, say, engineering. This is not my view at all, but one can understand people coming to that conclusion.

@Dara: re-reading the last posts I realised that I was preaching to the converted - you do not want impact to be in the REF. But then I am struggling to understand why you seem to suggest that there must be something wrong with other academics who also do not want impact to be in the REF... By the way, I guess the inventor of the metaphor "chip on the shoulder" did have a lot of impact... no thread goes by without somebody mentioning a chip on some shoulder or other ;-)

Dr Truth: do you know anything about modern English dialects, or is that also a branch of study you'd shut down? Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. To Dara: I suppose the problem is that the REF (like research grants) is regarded as about the only way of getting impact in, in a way that puts a direct, monetary value on it. I can see why that might be attractive; like you, I just don't see how it will work without wrecking the process. At the moment, the "impact" agenda is at risk of bringing the whole REF into direpute, and fundamentally, for all its shortcomings, the RAE/REF is not a bad idea. (Compared, for example, with how it's done elsewhere e.g. in France.)

Modern or ancient, take your pick. These influences of one language on another are undoubtedly interesting, but for almost all taxpayers just knowing that is enough. We certainly don't care to fund all sorts to dig up obscure connections that are irrelevant to the business of everyday living. The only language departments worth funding are those that train people to read, write, and speak well enough to communicate with fellow human beings. Regardless of what connections one might make to what, that people can make a decent living (atthe taxpayer's expense) by devoting time to such things as "medieval French" only underscores the need to measure the impact of what university academics do. Additionally, there is no need to study "modern English dialects": once basic, proper English has been learned adequately (usually no later than the end of secondary school), any variant can easily be picked up on the streets.

As I say, Dr Truth, ignorance is bliss. Self-evidently language departments dealing with these things you so despise like medieval French also "train people to read, write, and speak well enough to communicate with fellow human beings". Though there are always some of our fellow human beings, some of them apparently in universities, with whom it is simply not possible to communicate because their minds are so closed.

Dara, I have to say that I loved the phrase "stroppy academics demanding money with menaces on a popbitch website" It made me smile.....not bad on a grey November afternoon.

How many taxpayers actually give a genuine toss as to what gets funded in academic research? And of those that do, how many do we think are sufficiently well-informed of the precise nature of the research to make an intelligent decision regarding its worthiness? It's all very well to go down a Daily Mail populist route, but I don't believe an ill-informed public should be in direct charge of the academic research output of the UK any more than they should be in direct charge of the nuclear red button. Be careful what you wish for, Dr. Truth.

For example, at one point 4 or 5 years ago, the public might have given a green light to pouring substantial amounts of funding into researching whether there was any connection between the MMR vaccine and childhood autism, even though there was absolutely no reason (other than a hysterical tabloid storm in a teacup) to credibly view any potential link between the two (we might as well research the link between foemting whiskey at particular times of the year and the outbreak of conflicts in Africa). Would such Bad Science have been an acceptable use of taxpayers money, Dr. Truth? Even if taxpayers had clamoured for it?

Finally, what if we take the view that taxpayers should be allowed to determine the desirable results of research in advance? So, for example, some taxpayers might express a strong desire for a scientific study that backs up their view that immigration destroys cultural cohesion - and might decide that the taxpayer should be reimbursed personally from the pockets of the academics conducting the study if they happen to reach the "wrong" conclusion. This, surely, is the end logic of your constant bleating on about taxpayers, Dr. Truth.

John, I agree; with the proviso that I think I'd trust many taxpayers further than I trust our bigoted friend Dr T. I'm afraid that my experience has been that many of the nastiest and most prejudiced critics of academic research in areas they don't understand are to be found in universities. For all that Dr T. thinks he's arguing for impact to be part of REF, he's making such a bloody awful job of it that he has ended up showing exactly why there is such a good case against the idea.

Indeed. But the course of public sector managerial ideology in the 21st century has become to presume to speak for taxpayers who are invoked as a spectre to justify overbearing management, rather than given any sort of actual voice in the proceedings.

The proposal to determine impact and the support for that proposal did not come from the hoi poloi; they come from those of us who speak on their behalf and who also know exactly what goes on in the academy. Dismissing, as "Daily Mail route", serious concerns by serious people will not work. Similarly, getting all worked up and emotional, as Trotter is, is not very helpful. The way forward is for academics to give up their sense of entitlement and start accounting for the taxpayers' pounds.

You haven't really answered my points though, Dr. Truth. If we're going to be all concerned about taxpayers, then why shouldn't research grant applications be evaluated by members of the general public, drawn at random in the manner of a jury? We live in a well-developed, educated society; I don't see why taxpayers should have you speaking on their "behalf" when they are quite capable of doing so themselves. And you still, to my mind, haven't really "got" the core point, which is that opposition within the academe is not opposition to having an impact per se, it is opposition to the criteria by which something is judged to have "impact" being determined entirely by non-academics. Current proposals skewer impact toward short-term timescales that are often highly inappropriate, and which are oriented not to serving the taxpayers that you eulogise (but caricature), but toward university profits.

Dear John, The hallmark of Dr T.'s interventions, alas, is never to answer any points that anyone makes. I really don't think he can, so he doesn't bother to try. What is more disturbing (and although I'm not, I could I think legitimately get "worked up" about this) is his enthusiasm for "strong and direct action" (supra) and his now completely fatuous claim to speak for taxpayers. Unless he is an MP, which I suppose is always an option, that can't really be true. Not so much the "real world" of the 21st century, as the 1930s. And elsewhere on this site, he clearly reveals his contempt for what he insists on calling "the hoi poloi". So I think, all in all, we can see where he is coming from: and "serious concerns by serious people" it ain't.

I think where Dr. Truth is "coming from" is from a position in which all funding currently directed toward Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences is redirected toward his own discipline area (Physics, if the above comments are to be believed). This makes me very suspicious that Dr. Truth may really be a Physicist whose was refused a grant application of some sort in the past and is sore about it to this day, feeling that if only more funding were available to Physics then it would have been OK. Pure speculation, of course, but we all know how much of academia is defined by professional jealousy,

Once again, I encourage you to stop being emotional. BTW, given that I was writing to a dead-languages guy, I used "hoi poloi" to mean exactly that.

The general populace is not as well-educated as you appear to imagine; that is why they cannot be entrusted with certain tasks. But there is no reason why their enlightened representatives should not speak for them. I hope that answers your question. Regarding discipline-based funding, I was quite clear and objective in my statements: In times of plenty, there is no reason why we should not spend a little on people to do useless things; at the very least, it keeps them off the streets and off mischief. But in times such as these, it is only right and proper and money be directed to where it actually does something useful. I think most level-headed people would agree with that.

Everyone, stop getting worked up about Dr. Truth. It's a fake post. He/ She is doing this for their own amusement. No-one of any intelligence could possibly expect the rantings of this bullish middle Englannd mind set to be taken seriously. It's brilliant satire designed to stir everyone up. And if he/ she denies it that will only add to the effect. It's genius. Sheer genius.

Dr Truth: Aha, the "level-headed people" again.But why do you surmise that your nonsense makes me "emotional"? Very odd. "Enllightened representatives"? Strewth.

Dara, you state: "What I am against is the knee-jerk internet froth. Those academics are against impact basically because they think they don't have one." I'm afraid I don't quite get what you mean by "Those academics" in this context. Could you clarify this for me? As you no doubt know, over 8,000 academics have signed the UCU petition. The signatories include Nobel laureates, FRSs, fellows of various learned societies, and RAE2008 sub-panel members and Chairs. I doubt that you're suggesting that all of these academics are "against impact because they think they don't have one", so I'd appreciate a clarification. In addition, while you mention my throwaway Daily Mail remark in an earlier comment, you don't address the more substantive comments. In particular, have you considered that the HEFCE/RCUK impact agenda, when coupled with Mandelson's business-led academia "vision", may well be detrimental to return on taxpayers' investment?

"It's a fake post". There's nothing fake about it; it's up there for all to see. There's no drilling sense into some heads here; so I willnow give up.

Although I disagree strngly with most of what Dr. Truth says, I defend his right to say it. I don't know if it is ever likely to be possible to reach agreement, but it's important to hear unpalatable views. The view that, in times of less-than-plenty, we need to be careful how we spend our money - what's not to agree about? But underneath that, I think Dr. Truth holds the view that some research is valueless, or at least not very valuable. again - I think I have to agree - has anyone here ever observed research being advocated not on the basis of an important question that needs solving, but on the basis that some research income would benefit the department/faculty/university? I've even known of some academics seeking research income on the basis that they desparately need to buy time out of teaching because the workload is grindingly impossible and they feel it is destroying their ability to be a 'proper academic'. In fact, I'd even go so far as to surmise that a huge percentage - possibly more than 50% - of research activity is undertaken for flaky reasons. This is analogous to the situation where many people want to start a business (and obtain money from the bank to do so) not because they want to provide a better service at a better price, but because they want a bigger house and nicer car! - hardly the 'right' reason at all! Now, these people will sometimes moan that the bank don't understand, will only lend an umbrella when it's not raining, etc. But... and here's the rub - if the selection process the banks or the research bodies use is less than competant, - that is, the system cannot identify what might be a success and what might be ill thought-out, then everyone has a right to feel aggrieved. Might just as well throw a dice (a lot cheaper, too). Certainly, the assumption that a good researcher will naturally be better at making the case for social impact needs to be jolly well substantiated before spending hundreds of thousands of valuable research time on it. And researchers have the right to demand detailed evidence. Moreover, anyone who insisted on proposing a scheme without substantiation should be off down the jobcentre double quick. Incidentally, citing "commonsense" doesn't constitute substantiation.

Watching a Japanese TV series online this evening, I came across a scene which effectively put into words my uneasiness with the Government's current proposals for the universities . The terrifying teacher who is the central character of 'The Queen's Classroom' tells her 12-year-old pupils that there is no point in their studying simply to get into a good university or company. In that case, they ask, why should they study? 'You still don't get it? Study is not something you have to do, it's something you should want to do. In the future you'll come across a lot of things you won't know or comprehend. Beautiful things. Fun things. Mysterious things...When that happens you'll want to know more. Humans naturally want to study. People who are neither curious nor inquisitive are not humans...If you don't try to understand the world you live in, what can you do?...Studying---it's not something you do simply to pass tests. It's something you do to become a great person.' (http://www.mysoju.com/the-queens-classroom/episode-10/part-3/). This really goes to the heart of the issue: the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills sees study as a means, academics see it as an end. No wonder we feel devalued...

Professor Caroline Bynum, Director of the School of History at the Institute for Advanced Study in princeton, and a scholar who regularly reads some 300 applications to the Institute and so is rather better qualified to evaluate 'impact' than HMG's runningdogs, has said 'To say this is not to deny the deleterious effect that governement imposed standards and requirements can have. An example is the academic assesment procedures imposed in the United Kingdom. Awareness of such pressures however, makes it all the more important that scholars resist rather than exaggerate or collude with them' (Daedalus winter 2009) I note that those who extoll impact remain silent, and do not have the intellect, courage or integrity to defend their position.

Quick request: is there, anywhere, a comprehensive-yet-succinct summary of the substantiating arguments for the notion of "Impact"? - might the editors be able to dig it out for us?

@Bella: That's a great quote. It puts me in mind of the words of Drew Faust, President of Harvard (during her inaugural address): "“A university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that moulds a lifetime; learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future" [quoted in "What are universities for?", Geoffrey Boulton and Colin Lucas; League of European Research Universities (2008)]. Or, after running those beautiful and inspiring words through the BIS translation software, the key contribution of universities to the innovation ecosystem is human capital.

I think assessment by impact, as measured by surveys of the general public and profits, is a very good idea. We should certainly use the impact measure for compensating other public employees as well as university researchers, such as primary school teachers (how many of their children are earning money with, for example, a paper round within five years?), secondary school teachers (how many of their students are going into paying jobs rather than frittering away useless years earning nothing and just doing A-levels and going to university?), firemen (did they spend their time saving valuable factories and financial institutions rather than worthless working class homes?), doctors (let's focus on treating really valuable people rather than worthless geriatrics and infants), and politicians (obviously many more people have heard of Nick Griffin's ideas than of Peter Mandelson's, so he surely deserves something extra for his contribution to society). We don't OWE these people a living, especially in THESE tough times. What do they do for US? Let's hold them ACCOUNTABLE!

If we want to defeat the Gradgrinds of this world (aka Dr. Truth on this thread) we need to be smarter and outflank the opposition, if necessary from their right. For a start off the Russell Group should respond by threatening to go private - pointing to the obvious fact that 'impact asessment' will simply accelerate a brain drain from the arts and social sciences in the UK to the excellent private and semi-private US universities and liberal arts colleges where all sorts of 'functionless' high quality research in the humanities thrives. This brain drain would end up having obvious ECONOMIC consequences for UK education, as fewer high-fee-paying foreign students would choose to come here without high quality researchers in the humanities. Secondly, and more radically, we should consider pushing for marketized models of funding, such as vouchers, that would cut out the state-capitalist middle men entirely, and leave decisions about what courses are worth taking in the hands of students - many of the smartest of whom will opt for esoteric subjects in philosophy, etc, because they understand the inherent (and functional) value of reflection and critical thought per se. The error we are making, is clinging to the state. Could it not be that by coupling with the market directly (instead of through Peter Mandelson's interpretation of 'what the market wants'), we might actually be able to preserve a little autonomy for our fields? A desperate bargain or a last hope?

@richardB:: Are you a University of Buckingham academic or alumnus, perchance? If not, you should contact Terence Kealey *now* - a glittering career as Director of Communications for Buckingham awaits...