Since the first Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was introduced in 1986, such endeavours have always attracted their fair share of critics.
The Association of University Teachers (a precursor to UCU) argued in 2008 that “the RAE has had a disastrous impact on the UK higher education system, leading to the closure of departments with strong research profiles and healthy student recruitment.” Other commentators claimed the exercise placed undue pressure on academics to publish or perish, created unhealthy competition, nurtured gaming by universities and encouraged individuals to go to press with half-baked work – or in some cases, work that was based on falsified data.
And yet, over the same period, the reputation of UK universities for producing brilliant research soared. Britain may no longer be the workshop of the world; its standing as a global political superpower is a distant memory and its economy may have been overtaken by those of other nations; but overall, the UK performs extremely well in global university league tables, only surpassed by the endowment-rich cream of the US private sector.
By other indicators, too – publications, citations, attractiveness for international research talent, patents and reputation surveys – the UK’s most research-intensive universities are recognised as amongst the very best. The foundations of their success are surely based on the excellence of their research outputs and their quality is underpinned by the robust system of peer review which has run continuously since 1986.
