The cost of the latest Research Excellence Framework was £471 million – almost double the price tag of the 2014 exercise, a report has revealed.
Despite efforts to reduce the REF’s administrative burden on universities, a cost-benefit analysis commissioned by Research England and other UK funding bodies found that institutional spending on the 2021 exercise soared to £454 million, while another £17 million was spent on the REF by funding bodies.
That compares with the £246 million estimated cost of the 2014 exercise, which itself was four times as much as the £66 million spent on the 2008 audit, a rise caused partly by the need to articulate impact in REF submissions for the first time.
The rising cost of the 2014 REF was identified as a problem by Lord Stern of Brentford in his 2016 review, which observed that the “burden of the REF is rightly a matter of concern”. Several of his recommendations, such as the inclusion of all research-active staff to eliminate the need for selection of researchers, were partly aimed at reducing institutional expenditure.
