RAE 2008: The results

While I understand why you mark the 2001 "score" for Manchester as n/a, surely Dentistry was not affected by the merger and you could give its last assessment in your summary table?

This is a most pathetic and ridiculous show of top-down bureaucratic control at its worst. One only needs to look at the grade to see how farcical it is. "World leading", "Internationally excellent" etc. No one with a sane mind would find it sensible to impose such subjective categories of 'standards' on others' research output. <p>Even sadder is all those vice chancellors and university managers and heads lower down the rank are so willing to be complicits in this farce. Despite all the private and hush-hush moaning and complaining behind the scene, nothing is done to bring any real change. Why not be up in your arms to protest against this insane imposition from the government? Where is the spirit of adventure? Where is the spirit of free inquiry? <p>This country is going down the drain. Finis. <p>(I would challenge you to publish this comment.)

Another article by Zoe on the RAE and still no mention of Scottish universities.

It is completely wrong to say that the RAE methodology rated the quality of proportions of 'staff' etc. It did not and was absolutely explicit in this. A change from 2001. It was the volume of 'research' that was graded not individual people. Some people may have achieved 4* ratings for one publication and 2* for another, others none, or three, etc. Research environment and esteem were also starred in the profile. The % listed is not the % people.

I agree with Francesca. Another bureaucratic neo-liberal nail in the coffin of higher education in the UK.

The structure of the tables encourage the view that the weighted grade point average in itself is the most useful way to rank. But it would seem more useful to use this figure multiplied by the volume. This is easy enough to do as an individual but I wondered if you would consider adding such a column to your tables as I am sure I am not the only one trying to balance the figures for volume with the profiles. Please will you add such a column? <p>Admission - this will help the bit of the university I work in look good :-).

Boniface - there's a mention in the article of both Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, if that helps...

Francesca, <p>a terrifying challenge if ever I saw one. Yes, research is inevitably subjective to a certain degree, but the RAE has proven to be a relatively useful (albeit inperfect) way of dishing out funding for quality basic research- i.e. it allows academics to follow their 'spirit of inquiry', rather than just conducting research which is in line with the Government's current priorities. <p>It should be noted that global citations for UK research have significantly increased since the introduction of the RAE in the mid 1980's. <p>It isn't perfect (which is why the REF is being introduced) but there are people with 'sane minds' who see some value in it.

I had a good laugh at some of the comments. Private Eye's Dave Spart could not have surpassed them. Nobody has ever said the RAE is perfect but I remember the culture of mediocrity in academics I experienced as a student and now reflect upon how much better served students are by staff who are engaged in their subjects. The RAE has shaken up academic life with some bad though mostly good results.

In line with Patick's comment - if you are measuring research significance, there is clearly a case for ranking according to GPA multiplied by volume. Larger, broader units clearly make more impact than very small units. Your method, by excluding volume from the ranking, also rewards those institutions who strategically excluded some researchers in order to gain a better GPA.

Boniface: <p>Diddums! <p>Are we worried the myth that Scotland has the "best education system in the world" (along with umpteen other arrogant and fanciful Scottish claims) is being recognised as such.

I can't agree with Phil about the RAE serving students well. All the RAE does is reward those academics who can play the publication game. This certainly does not translate into quality of teaching and often seems to reward those who put the least effort into teaching, so that they can concentrate on research. For those of us who care more about teaching than the journal rankings, our careers suffer as a result of how much the RAE dominates academia today.

This is such fun isn't it? <p>Careful though - spending too much time gazing at this could seriously affect your output for whatever the next 'assessment' exercise will be!

Re: Patrick and Paul <p>Yes, multiplying the GPA by volume gives a better measure of the output of institutes but don't forget that you should also multiply by the fraction of RAE eligible staff submitted, to catch those institutes that have tried to fiddle the system by only submitting a small proportion of their staff. This doesn't much affect the outcome for the universities at the top of the table but those at the bottom have been a little less "honest" (with the honorable exceptions of Heythrop College, and University of Abertay Dundee).

I can't agree with Phil either. As an undergraduate in the 1980s I was taught be the full range of staff in lectures and seminars. By the late 1990s, when I came back to do a Masters and then a PhD, much of the undergraduate seminar work was being undertaken by PhD students. The RAE appears to have contributed to a situation in which teaching comes a poor second to producing publications.

I totally agree with Chris. <p>The danger with league tables such as this is that it will encourage higher education institutions in this country to focus on research and to forget about their core work, the lecturing and teaching. When I did my Masters degree, I found that the lecturers cared much more about their research than they did the teaching side of their job! I feel that students pay an awful lot of money to study nowadays but they do not get the care and attention from the lecturers that they deserve. <p>Dan Dan

Re: The editor's comment about "staff", it seems that pretty much all media coverage is writing as if the percentages were "percentage of staff" . Can't we expect better of THE, the specialist journal, since it is factually inaccurate, and not very difficult to talk about percentages of submitted research output. I don't think a piece of research would get much more than a 1* for being that far away from rigour. <p>The downside, of course, is that when you write... <p>"In total, the equivalent of about 8,900 staff accrued the highest grade (4*)." <p>What the number really means is that the equivalent of about 8,900 staff published one paper in the last 6 years that was worthy of a 4*. Furthermore, these are not percentages of all research done. They are percentages of the percentage of output that was submitted. (And that leaves aside the contribution from environment and the nebulous esteem that seems to be obscuring the view in our Universities.)

This is ridiculous; why should the tax payer have fund useless subjects such as dance, media studies, music and history? If people want to learn how to dance or learn about history, they should spend their own money on it or rely on private companies who do these things. I hope none of that £1.5bill+ of tax payer money goes this pointless "research." Infact, everything from UoA33-UoA67 is a waste of tax-payers money.

The true purpose of the RAE is to bind the work of researchers to a short list of publishers. If you publish with, say, Elsevier, you score high at the RAE, and thus you know what you must do for your career. The RAE has nothing to do with the fostering of excellence of individual researchers; it is all about feeding certain publishers.

According to the RAE, 15 pc of my dept's research is "world-leading". But who on earth is assessing world-class research? Are panel members world-class? So, according to the RAE some of my research is not world-class. Well, that's not the opinion of those who invite me to give plenary talks, and of the really world-class journals asking me to peer-review articles and review books. <p>RAE only comes to show again that universities have turned into business that look more and more like circuses. <p>Very disappointing.

Interesting discussion about the relevance of volumes. In reply to Paul's earlier comments, does he really mean to say that research will be more significant if a University has 500 contributors at an average 2* than if a University has 200 at an average of 4*. <p>If this were the case, and it turns out to be the basis on which HEFCE "reward" us all in their calculations of QR, then it really will be a case of "never mind the quality, feel the width!!!" to quote an old tv programme title. Of course the ultimate gain is to have 500 at 4*, but in the meantime to move up the tables all you have to do get everyone to submit - and it doesn't take long to identify which University's adopted that as a strategy. <p>The tables rank in terms of excellence, not significance. As the premise appears to have been to highlight, and perhaps subsequently reward, excellence then perhaps this is the right measure.

I recently left a department in a UK university to work in a leading non-UK university. My former department did very well in this RAE - staggeringly well, so well in fact that its trebles all round. I can't help feeling, though, that my former colleagues and dear friends are not so much celebrating a great triumph but are simply drunk on the (momentary) sense of relief. It is rather like, I suspect, the sense of freedom enjoyed once the torture has stopped, even if only dimly and reluctantly aware that it will soon resume. <p>The RAE is a policy premised on the notion that if academics are not publishing (enough), and the public purse is not getting 'value for money', then repeated bouts of flogging will provoke the desired 'outputs'. <p>Whatever the dubious accounting value of the RAE it is without a doubt a corruption of scholarship, critical enquiry and education as enlightenment. <p>Get steady for the next (self-) flagellation.

This RAE exercise has been a shock to say the least. To be precise it is very untrustworthy. Lets taken an one example. Beds. Only 5% of the 8.40 staff submitted were 4*, 10% got 3*, 55% got 2* and 30% got 1* in Earth Systems and Environment Sciences. That means that over 85% of the 8.40 staff are 2*. Even if there are only 8.4 staff in that department of subject area that would be still be very insignificant. Yet, Ebdon (v-c) goes on to the University's website and proclaims that his University has International research in this area and others. Another example is Bucks New. Only 2.6 are ‘A’ rated for research. What about the rest of the staff? Brookes is a bit better. It has about 45% at 2*, the other categories are balanced out. <p>As they appear, most of the staff at academic Beds, Bucks New, De Montfort, Brookes and Middlesex all tend to be “Glorified Secondary School teachers”. Would you go and study an undergraduate degree let alone a Master's degree or a PhD at these Universities? <p>Let’s start a petition to shut down, New Bucks, Beds, De Montfort and Middlesex for starters.

Why do you multiply he 4 stars by 4 and the 3 stars by 3 etc. I can not see the logic in doing that-why not multiply by another randomly chosen number? Also I can not see how any conclusions can be drawn from the weighted data-the weighted averages are so close that the rankings are meaningless. The Times Higher should carry out some more robust stats on these data. What you have done is completly arbitary I suggest that all of the tables are reworked using the accepted data analysis techniques for non-parametric data-you will be surprised by the results. Perhaps one of our colleagues with expertise in this area should rework the data. Looks like really poor experimental design to me.

Already we can see the genius in this new RAE format. Everybody is a winner! Every VC will praise their staff for their 'world class', 'internationally recognised', 'internationally excellent' (delete as appropriate) contribution'. Every university will be able to claim they have 'improved' their research output. In my town of Preston, the local newspaper is headlining that 'UCLAN is better than Oxford', based on one particularly good result from one department. What rubbish this all is. Meaningless, obfuscating, and costly. The louder that universities shout about their 'excellence' the greaater the realisation that something is seriously amiss in UK HE.

I'm really not sure why THES has felt the need to go and compile league tables with an average as an indicator measure when the RAE compilers haven't. All that is serves to do is promote inconsistency. Take a look at the difference between the two in a subject area such as History. In the RAE, Edinburgh and Glasgow come third and seventh in the UK respectively, which seems about right looking at the data provided. Now, thanks to THES, we see Hertfordshire University (No disprespect intended) shoot up from 60th to 10th; Cambridge drop to 7th (Behind Essex and Kent); and Edinburgh and Glasgow down to 33rd and 21st respectively. <p>The problem with an average is this: Imperial College has a tiny department, and submitted a handful of articles for scrutiny. It only teaches one history course, and is linked to a wider technology degree. Does this warrant them being rated as the best University for the subject? Does anyone really believe Hertfordshire, Kent and Essex are all miles above former 5* institutions that now don't make the top 25 in some cases in the THES 'average' table? <p>The glaring deficiency in only submitting one piece of great work and nothing else, thus giving you a sky high 'average', is there for all to see, but for my money, the FTE score is a far fairer way of judging a Universities quality across the board, making the comment 'Lancaster and Glasgow have slipped' purely academic, as these two institutions will get more money than they ever have done before, regardless of what THES think.

I totally disagree with Chris, who is obviously someone who feels so threatened by the competitive pressure that colleagues who are successful in publishing impose on him. My research benefits my teaching because I can tell my students how I create new ideas, new ways of looking at things, or simply how I tackle a research questions. The only option for those who do not engage themselves in research is by regurgitating material from the textbooks during the lectures. So please let the intellectual honesty that should characterise your profession prevail on your mere economic interests

I downloaded the excel file from here and put the GPA formula into a new column. The average scores I obtained are different from those in the table and hence the rank order! The top ten are: <p>Institute of Cancer Research <p>London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine <p>London School of Economics and Political Science <p>University of Oxford <p>University of Cambridge <p>Imperial College London <p>University College London <p>University of Manchester <p>University of Warwick <p>University of Essex <p>Then, I multiplied this column with the Indicative Proportion of RAE eligible staff submitted (%) to get a new rank. The top ten are now: <p>Institute of Cancer Research <p>London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine <p>London School of Economics and Political Science <p>University of Oxford <p>University of Cambridge <p>University College London <p>University of Warwick <p>University of Edinburgh <p>Lancaster University <p>University of Durham <p>Now I have understood the wisdom behind this exercise. Anybody can have his own interpretation!

Pippo, it depends very much on which discipline you are working within. Some students are not well served by lecturers who are more interested in their research than in drawing upon their knowledge of scholarly debates gained from having read the literature. <p>If you were a sociologist teaching a course which had as one of its objectives getting students to think about how intimate relationships are conducted in late modernity, it would be to your students' advantage if you were well acquainted with Giddens's text 'The Transformation of Intimacy', and could relate it intelligently to other writings by, for instance, Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman and Michel Foucault. <p>In such a circumstance it is clear to see why being able to teach 'from the book' would be useful. The importance of having published research of one's own on the subject is less obvious. One imagines (and hopes) that knowing the literature on the topic would be the higher priority.

David Zhong is correct - the point of the exercise is precisely to produce results which are so malleable and open to interpretation that HEFCE can simply do as it pleases when it comes to allocating funding. The quality profiles make it impossible to compare institutions, and departments are already spinning the results to their advantage (History of Art at York, for example, are claiming they are second in the country (based on % of 4*) when league tables based on GPAs show otherwise. Transparency in funding allocations is an impossibility - which, I suspect, is precisely what HEFCE and the government wanted.

David Zhong has hit the nail on the head here- what it leaves us is not with an exact idea of who is the best at anything, but merely a very rough picture of who will probably get the most funding. Since this funding isn't evenly distributed amongst staff in a department, having less per head isn't necessarily an issue, as it might all go a few members anyway (hypothetically). <p>What this leaves us with is this: Edinburgh, which might have an average of 2.65 for a particular subject, will get far more funding that Imperial for the same discipline, because it submitted 62 staff members to Imperial's 5, even if Imperial had an average of 3.2. I know for a fact Edinburgh won't care one jot about this, since its far from likely the money would be spread anywhere near evenly across the 62 anyway- so having a bigger pot at a lower average suits institutions down to the ground. Thus, if we multiply the 'average' with the amount submitted in each subject, to gain a rough indicator of where each is in relation to the rest, we see (as far as my limited case studies have went) that Universities which have dropped down the THES 'table of excellence', have in many cases ended up with more money relative to 2001 than those with a much higher average- thanks purely to being big departments who can submit lots of staff members. <p>What this tells us, is by and large, the Russell Group will continue to widen the gap on funds between themselves and smaller institutions, who, although excellent in areas, lack the clout to secure the funding to ever match their larger rivals. To my mind, this is the biggest issue the RAE people have to address.

The Times said: '...some universities with leading scores had declined to enter up to a quarter of their academics. Exeter University...moved from 26th to 15th when all staff were taken into account rather than just those entered for the exercise.’

[QUOTE] Anish 18 December, 2008 This is ridiculous; why should the tax payer have [to] fund useless subjects such as dance, media studies, music and history? Infact, everything from UoA33-UoA67 is a waste of tax-payers money. [/QUOTE] What is truly ridiculous is the uninformed rant of someone who hasn't taken the time to consider the benefits that said research, so casually dismissed as superfluous, has for many taxpayers. Especially when the research potentially enables the very rant itself.

Chris, please let us be sensible. You are putting forward, one by one, all the myths that those who do not publish use against those who do. It is a myth to say that to write an article you do not need to know the literature: it is the opposite. You need to be able to position your contribution relative to those of others: in social sciences this is more so. But getting published entails more than just studying the literature: you need to seriously think about a synthesis of the existing knowledge, and there is no synthesis without learning. But if you do not spend hours honing your texts to come up with an appropriate synthesis, then you have certainly not learnt. Hence, you have become the kind of teacher that regurgitates from the textbook without any critical thinking. I am an economist that comes from abroad: this is another thing that the RAE made possible, and that some indigenous academics may not like.

As to "why should the tax payer have fund useless subjects such as dance, media studies, music and history?", firstly, we're talking about the funding of research, not teaching; and secondly, we have a liberal tradition in higher education of valuing academic study for its own sake and not just for the short-term instrumentalist objective of churning out skilled workers for industry. That is actually the job of industry itself, not the education system. <p>History is important as an academic subject. It is beneficial to any free society to fund research into history. Without a community of historians and the opportunity for academically able citizens to attend universities to learn history and its research methods, a malevolent state would be able to define historical knowledge any way it chooses. It would greatly diminish the extent of transparency and accountability in government. <p>The RAE is about which university departments deserve more research funding according to the priorities of a flawed accounting system. It is not about whether one subject is more deserving of public financial support than another.

Agreeing with David Knight, I have to say that History is an important subject and after achieving the best RAE results in the entire institution I hope Northampton university academic "management" will see the error of their ways in proposing unfair job cuts for the hard working Historians. The fact that a discipline so fundamental to our understanding of culture and society can be trashed while non-rae returning spoonbenders and spiritualists in "parapsychology" flourish is beyond my ken.

Anish 18 December, 2008; <p>This is ridiculous; why should the tax payer have [to] fund useless subjects such as dance, media studies, music and history? Infact, everything from UoA33-UoA67 is a waste of tax-payers money. <p>Reply by Chris: <p>What is truly ridiculous is the uninformed rant of someone who hasn't taken the time to consider the benefits that said research, so casually dismissed as superfluous, has for many taxpayers. Especially when the research potentially enables the very rant itself. <p>Anish; <p>OK Chris, name me one useful thing that research into UoA46-UoA67 has ever achieved for the public?

Anish; OK Chris, name me one useful thing that research into UoA46-UoA67 has ever achieved for the public? As just one example, do you suppose art galleries would exist in their present forms and mount the kinds of exhibitions they do, if university-based art historians were not funded to undertake research? Even if you think that culture is merely a luxury (and you would be wrong here), such research is extremely successful in terms of knowledge transfer, and contributes to the UK economy too.

@Anish You obviously live a life with no contact with culture of any type whatsoever.

Anish wins the prize for ignoring other people who point out the absurdity of his argument (such as it is) and for being a general buffoon.

Why did you say that "Cardiff appears to have sacrificed its quality rating by submitting a high volume of staff."? According to the provided excel spreadsheet "The Table of Excellence", Cardiff submitted only 67% of their staff, which is well below any other universities ranked above Cardiff.

Promoting competiton very much creates the debate that we are engaged in right now. whether one disagrees with the THE results or not, this is a factual matter now (you may create your own analysis and interpretations). Universities' successes are not limited to their research excellence, but also in benifitting their local environments and their national and international stakeholders as a whole. I have seen my universuty invest more than Oxford in student facilities and in creating the perfect study place for its students. Such facilities and a place creates the right environment for me along with my supporting and friendly lecturers to research and thus top the ranks. If you insist knowing about what university I am on about, well, close your ears and open your eyes, its the prestigious university of Hertfordshire.

I am fascinated by all the comments from all of the contributors. Some are rather wild while others actually make sense. However I cannot shake the feeling that those Universities who have successfully 'played the game' (low input numbers, drastic exclusion etc) and as a result got a 'good' result may well have entered into a classic Faustian bargain. I wonder what their future prospects really are.

Speaking from the joy, er, relief of a now-badged-as-"world-class" department, Can I just say that Sonny was 100% spot on? And they even made us pay for our own celebratory fizzy wine from Tesco. But at least it means we can enjoy our Christmas holiday before they start flogging us again.

Ken - you are an unbelievable snob! I have a a Russell Group degree, a PhD, 4 books out, edit a journal, sometimes review for a national newspaper, have won AHRC awards, referee for publishers, award bodies, learned journals left, right and centre - and I am a committed lecturer too: where do I work? Oxford Brookes. Stick that up your leather-elbow patched tweed jacket you elitist ******* **** **** *****!

There are two winners in this game: (a) The VC's at the "lower end of the market" who crave for academic respectability. (b) Those chosen to do research without the tire-some need to lecture. As one former colleague used to comment "as we're supporting them by doing their lecturing, shouldn't we either get our name on the paper or at least acknolwedgement?"

Without allowing for volume of submission, the raw data says nothing. Thus the Research Power rankings are the most credible form for this data to be viewed in.

I have just looked at the RAE 2008 table again. This is just ridiculous. Bedfordhire has about 70 category 'A' staff, of these 15% are unclassified. Yet, the v-c (Ebdon) is singing 'internationally reputable' research. This 70 out of about 250. This goes on tio prove how naive Ebdon is. He might be a v-c but not aware of research. His University has 'limited confidence' from QAA. Bucks New Uni has only 25 category 'A' staff. Let's close down these and M'sex, Kingston, etc. whose v-cs don't know what they are talking about.

Teaching in an area you also research in can add real value, and you certainly need to have looked in depth at relevent literature to do good teaching in the long term. The problem with the RAE is that just so much attention and energy has is put in to it that this can be at the expense of teaching. In the end, the vast majority of departments will now be feeling something between disappontment with the results. It creates few winners and leaves too many feeling like losers

It would be interesting to correlate the scores obtained in Units such as Nursing with panel membership. Where were the checks against mates being chosen to sit with each other - or benefit each other - on these panels?. As for 'international excellence', well, making a few joint appointments or doing some work with old friends overseas has made no difference to anyone except the players. Even worse, however, are those Nursing departments who didn't even bother to enter this RAE - shame on some of the oldest academic Nursing departments in the UK who now get by with tenure and lazy attitudes.

So how much did this useless exercise cost the tax payer? £1billion, £2billion?, ... <p>After all that effort and waste of so-called clever minds, we get a result we already knew that Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, ... are the best. <p>You can always trust academics to consistently waste valuable tax payers money. Graham

Ken-identify yourself. I love your snobbery and confident sense of superiority and am dying to hear more of your blimpisms. Come on who are you and where are you? I am assuming, if you are in an English department, you must be one of the eight above DMU. Do you want us closed because you are scared of the competition? Or is it just sour grapes? PS Your first 'Lets' should have an apostrophe

The RAE is important but of course flawed. How often would we go into a competition, for competition it is, without first knowing the prizes? <p>I have no problem with the ranking at the top but as some of the comments have already indicated there are cases of being ‘economic with the truth’ lower down in the tables. <p>Just like the other HE league tables vice chancellors put lots of cash behind their attempts to position their institution and it is true that teaching might well suffer. However teaching also suffers when it is done by staff who have little affinity for their subjects and, though I am sure that this is ‘an inconvenient truth’, there are many in HE who do not know (and care less about) ‘their subjects’. <p>I expect the UK to find its rightful place nearer the bottom of the league table of countries because of the misguided actions of the last two governments who have given us quantity rather than quality of HE. <p>I know because I have spent all of my working life working in universities both good and bad.

Graham (22/12) comments are completely unfounded. Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial did not out perform everyone at every subject. This more precise measurement (than 2001) will distribute funding more clearly. Graham has clearly not read past the first 3 lines of the report and not even looked at the tables in full. <p>"1billion? 2billion?" Primary school league tables is perhaps he should pay attention to

When it comes to university reputation, there's always the X-factor: if some XYZ university comes out top in the RAE, and Cambridge, Oxford or Imperial ended up last in the table, does that mean Cambridge, Oxford or Imperial is inferior? Will they attract less students? Will they stop getting funding? No. They will always be well-known universities and that's how they will always be perceived. Having said that, I personally think that the RAE is flawed and a waste of time and money. Except for a few universities, UK universities in general have a long way to go before they are really recognized internationally. The time and money should be invested in improving the quality of education and research, as well as making education in the UK more accessible to international students.

Its Christmas day and I am trying to decide whether I would have liked to have been given a Porsche or a BMW today. It is so very obvious. I would choose a BMW as, although both Porsche and BMW may have scored a 3.0 in the RAE league tables, BMW make so many more cars per year. Businesses and research teams are of different sizes people!

Aberystwyth as one of best for politics? Clearly the RAE is deeply deeply flawed. Prospective students shouldn't base their entry decisions or impression of quality on the RAE (I made this mistake).

I am studying Politics in Aberystwyth and the staff there are world-class. Many mistake its low entrance requirements for weaker standards, this is simply not true. Smith would have been aware Aberystwyth had 5* in 2001 and its high standard shows again how well the department is doing. I believe some people develop a sense of arrogance or turn against their institution. My understanding from people I have talked to are that they are very happy with the standard of quality at Aberystwyth. It must not be mistaken for a sidedish item, simply due to its obscure location. The results show it really is a strong institution that can rival inner-city locations.

Hah, a record response time! My experience led me to conclude that the RAE was most certainly not an indicator of quality, and that low entrance requirements did indeed attract less able candidates, but believe as you will my friend. it is certainly a good department to go to if you want to get a 2:1 with relatively little work. People should have a look at the world rankings link which someone posted above. Ciao.

By the way, less able candidates=lower marking standards (they don't want to lose people, given that they have plenty of vacant places every year-although many universities have this problem now). The problem with the RAE is that is taken as indicator of overall quality. (I can imagine the frantic google search for univeristy guides which will now follow).The department's big emphasis on its RAE place is extremely misleading to potential entrants. I would be happy to be proven wrong however, as it would place my average 2:1 in a better light. Also, arrogance and/or a sense of self-importance seem to be a prerequisite for studying international politics, and particularly for teaching it as an 'academic' discipline. Possibly this comments page will now be swamped by aber interpol students telling of their great experience there, and protesting a little too stridently any criticisms made of their choice of department/institution, and no doubt, if the above occurs, there will be some personal comments made too. If you are happy with your choice though, then the best of luck to you. Whether anyone else choosing to enroll will be equally happy is an open outcome however. The beauty of living in the West is that differences of opinion are usually tolerated. See above for criticisms of the RAE.

Also, I should add that these tables do not represent overall quality, no matter what may be claimed. I don't want to get into an internet argument over this, however, I did not feel that the level of education offered here was what might be expected of 5*, and now the equivalent. So, here's a little extra credit project. Have fun.

somewhere down in the eighties;that would be a true indicator of overall quality.

...and would best reflect the whole institution as an HE provider, not just its academic performance, so that quality becomes an all inclusive term.

Revisiting this argument in light of the above, my original comments were about the process of the RAE, rather than the integrity of any of the individuals involved. My unreserved apologies if this came across as spiteful or unprofessional in tone. What I was trying to say is that a system that invites a small number of individuals to rate themselves, and then everyone else, will always be open to criticism. Why not let every institution who enters the RAE nominate someone; and then select at least some of the panel at random. Or have a wider, perhaps two tier, panel that includes practitioners and users? Judging research quality from 4 publications also seems an implausible procedure. Some people will have published only 4 papers for the RAE whilst other might have published 40 in the same period! What about the IMPACT of research in practice-based disciplines? How should we begin to judge that? And where do citations and teaching staff/researchers ratios come in? No system will be perfect but the Universities, who are already making all sorts of claims of the back of RAE results, fail to take the limitations of the process into account and simply look for marketing headlines. Researchers in nursing (usually) work hard to produce findings that might be useful - and some submit to the RAE knowing that the odds are against them. Others simply didnt take the risk or went to join the party at other panels. So, yes some celebration is in order for what has been achieved but let's not forget what is also at risk of being lost within these numerals and decimal points.

Interpretation of the RAE results made our Christmas break extremely interesting !

How flawed the rankings really are will be a bit clearer when HEIs have information about what proportion of their scores went to outputs, environment and esteem. For the time being it seems reasonable to say that a department or university submitting less than a quarter of its staff can't possibly have as active a research culture as one that returns nearly everyone. A different concern is the use of the term 'peer review.' Sub-panels substituted the expertise of thousands of specialist journal and publishers' reviewers worldwide with that of a relatively small number of UK academics working to a very tight schedule and with a level of secrecy that would be unacceptable in most other branches of university or public life. That alone is sufficient to cast doubt on the validity of the new research rankings.

Whilst the newer system may have have been created to avoid the knife edge something that has not been mentioned is that it is scarcely clear and inteligible to people outside of academia. If most of us were asked how the system worked, how it produces results and where we were ranked most sensible people would be sound asleep by the middle of the second sentence!

It is interesting but sad to see so much effort going into criticising the RAE, rather than into a discussion of what University research is for and how it interacts with teaching. May I bring to your attention the paper I wrote in 2006 in response to the UK Government request for comments on using metrics for the RAE. I quote: "The UK government spends a large amount of public money on academic research and it is disturbing that there has been no debate about what it is for and how it benefits the taxpayer. In the absence of market forces, any organisation inevitably becomes producer led, and both the existing funding allocation by peer review, and the proposed change to evaluation by income provide incentives to academics to spend more and more money to produce more and more papers irrespective of quality. 1.2…Some things which are obvious to many academics are being ignored both by those proposing a new metrics approach and by those resisting it. For example, not all papers are equal. Ask a career researcher “How many of the papers published in your field do you read twice?” The answer is likely to be “Very few. I don’t have time to read them all, but some half dozen I read again and again.” This implies that a lot of academic research is unnecessary. Not all researchers are equal. Say to a research team leader “Here is £10,000 to invite someone from overseas, an expert in your field, to come and meet your group. Who will you invite?” He/she will often give you an answer there and then, “Dr A” he might reply. “Is there nobody else?” you ask. “Well maybe Prof. B or even C, but A is the man for us.” He/she is unlikely to say “Anybody from the department of x at the University of California, Berkeley.” Individuals do high impact research. Every idea starts in one head. Some people are much better at it than others are. This implies that evaluating departments may not be the most efficient way of allocating support for research. There is also a fundamental problem with the present system of using ‘peer review’ committees to share out research funds. This is that all the members of the committees have an interest in the result. Ask the research team leader if these committees are important and he will reply that they are of such critical importance that the survival of a department may well depend on their decisions. Ask if the decisions are always fair and he may well cautiously suggest that maybe the system is not robust enough to resist the pressures placed upon it. Ask what his university is doing about it and he will reply that they are doing everything they can to get their people on to the committees. 1.3…The best new system must surely be one which seeks to improve the quality of academic research and the way universities interact with activities in the wider community. Identifying such a system requires first defining what is meant by quality, why academic research should be supported and how research results are used by bodies outside the universities. These are the subjects of this paper." The paper is on a web site academic-research.co.uk Two appendices consider the weakness of peer review, one an objective evaluation and the other a subjective peer review of peer review.

This discussion has largely ignored the underlying purpose of the RAE. It is not about research quality, or the 'world class' work done by Dr X, or Prof. Y. It is a tool invented by civil servants to manage higher education. The exercise is a fig leaf justification for maintaining, or marginally adjusting, the status quo in relation to research income, brought in to being to smooth the creation of the 'new university sector'. As such it is an administrative game that academics simply need to play, rather than to take personally. The anxious rants and raves that have featured in this discussion seem to reflect a community that has lost sight of the intrinsic value of its own work. For myself, I have spent four RAEs analysing the rules and playing the game to the best of my ability on behalf of several different departments. But, I have never let it effect my belief in the importance and value of my own research, scholarship or teaching. If, as a community, we are going to discuss this system, let us be clear that its relationship to 'quality' is inherently tangential, contingent and largely irrelevant, even when our jobs, and futures and comforts depend on the outcome.

4 publications in what - 8 - years isn't much to ask out of taxpayers money. People in HE who think they are suffering neoliberalism are like millionaires pleading poverty. They are narcissistic self righteous idiots. Paying for your privatized drinking water, are you ? Living in a society where there is no NHS, no free primary and secondary education? Yes, there's gameplaying, there's penalizing of the new Unis, and thats bad. But the real unspoken truth is that the RAE is absolutely trivial, a doddle, light touch, and quite liberal in the old sense, compared with the real day to day horrors of neoliberalist managerialism experienced by most people in the UK, never mind the whole world. You mean they pay us and they expect us to work, and provide some evidence ? Look to the Leeds Met postings to see what its like in a Uni where there is no RAE significance, by and large, and how that disempowers front line academics. Some bureaucrat tries to bully you, and you can't say, or imply, "dont do that or I'm off". Without the RAE life for most researching academics would be more miserable, not less. And that is why VCs hate it more than we do.

4 publications in what - 8 - years isn't much to ask out of taxpayers money. People in HE who think they are suffering neoliberalism are like millionaires pleading poverty. They are narcissistic self righteous idiots. Paying for your privatized drinking water, are you ? Living in a society where there is no NHS, no free primary and secondary education? Yes, there's gameplaying, there's penalizing of the new Unis, and thats bad. But the real unspoken truth is that the RAE is absolutely trivial, a doddle, light touch, and quite liberal in the old sense, compared with the real day to day horrors of neoliberalist managerialism experienced by most people in the UK, never mind the whole world. You mean they pay us and they expect us to work, and provide some evidence ? Look to the Leeds Met postings to see what its like in a Uni where there is no RAE significance, by and large, and how that disempowers front line academics. Some bureaucrat tries to bully you, and you can't say, or imply, "dont do that or I'm off". Without the RAE life for most researching academics would be more miserable, not less. And that is why VCs hate it more than we do.

Every new university is claiming that as a result of the RAE exercise, their departments, a few of them at least do world class rearch. As an external examiner to a few of those universities, I found that opposite is the case. The current RAE ratings framework was flawed. The top rating should have been something like 6* and there had to be a threshold at 3* above which should have been the national and international ratings at 4* and 5* respetively. I work in a new university which our senior manangement claims has substantially improved and has world class research done in a few departments, which puzzles me. From what I know we are mainly a teaching university taking students with UCAS points around 240, and have very very few ( almost none) world class researchers. I would say, the top 10-12 universities in this country can claim to be world class and others in the horse race jargon are 'also ran'

Please could dome one tell me that how we can calculate the RAE data as a one score for a university? for example times said Sity university London is 14th according rae 2008. Regards

nice job

how I can interpret RAE score to know about research quality?

Nural, you can't. What happens is before the RAE universitys fire all their young promising researchers who havn't really had enough time to establish themselves and publish lots of papers and hire a lot of more established people who may not be doing such exciting research, but because they have a lot of funding and people working for the already are able to publish more quickly. All the RAE tells you is how many big research groups any given university has. One or two individual people can be amazingly creative and do high quality research. For instance Watson and Crick hadn't published much at all before their discovery of DNA in 1953. So if poor old Watson and Crick had been in an RAE in 1950 they'd have been given a 0* rating for research and fired. Now wouldn't that have been a shame.....

The RAE it appears permits a certain artistic licence for universities when firing up the propoganda machine to cunjure up whatever rating sounds credible (or in some case incredible), and post it on their web pages. I have recently reluctantly resigned from a new university which whilst not claiming world leading research in my particular subject area, does claim 'tremendous improvement', which I find rather puzzling. I was initally recruited to pursue reseach as well as teach, but later informed that I am paid only to teach. After an enormous struggle to undertake research, I resigned. I came to realise that research in my department was rather like how I might imagine being part of the Resistance -a clandestine activity, largley conducted under the cover of darkness, by wide eyed and brave idealists. So although the RAE has something of the emperors new clothes about it (and it's not a pretty sight), I applaude the underworld of my research active colleagues (whoever you are), for staying loyal to the cause, and the ideal that research should be conducted for the palpable benefit of society (a concept overlooked in RAE). However as the dust begins to settle on the feeding frenzy that is the RAE, it is back to teaching, whilst the research menace is securely locked and bolted in the dungeon until next time. As in so many areas of life the smell of money has a powerful effect on minds.

RESEARCH ASSESSMENT ANALYSIS (RAE) MUST ALSO INCLUDED (I) HOW MANY NUMBER OF RESERACH PROJECTS HANDELLED BY THE FACULTY (II) HOW MANY NUMBER OF PATENTS FILED NATIONALLY OR INTERNATIONALY. (III)HOW MANY NUMBER OF CONSULTANCY ARE GIVEN (IV) WORK ON HUMAN SUSTAINABILTY TO AVOID MOST UTILISATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES ITHINK ABOVE PARAMETERS MAY BE INCLUDED IN RAE

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