Universities worry about fallout from research ranking
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Version 0 of 1. It took six years and cost around £60m – yet the recent attempt to sort world-class from mediocre research in UK universities appeared remarkably undiscriminating. At least that seemed the case when results of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) were published last month. University websites wallowed in self-congratulation in the wake of the REF, where experts assessed research in 36 subject areas, looking at quality, the infrastructure that supported it, and its impact on the outside world. By lunchtime on results day, one observer had counted 14 universities tweeting that they were in the top 10. One problem, says Adam Crawford, pro-dean for research and innovation in the faculty of education, social sciences and law at the University of Leeds, was that universities heard about their own results before realising that the share of top-rated research had gone up across the board, from 14% in the last exercise to 22% in this one. While they had done well, so had many others. There were so many different things to be top in – quantity of top-graded research, number of researchers doing top-graded research, and of course, impact – numbers could be crunched in which ever way proved most favourable. But with more detailed analysis of strengths and weaknesses due to be sent to institutions this week, university managers have begun to think more soberly about what changes the REF will bring. Quick off the blocks is City University – whose REF result showed the number of staff producing world-leading or internationally excellent research had doubled in five years to 40% – to explore the possibility of joining London University. “We are having informal discussions about the possibility of making an application,” says City’s vice-chancellor, Paul Curran, who says a decision will be made after Easter. “In the past we weren’t in a strong enough position from a research point of view, but we are now.” He says the university has worked hard to boost its research profile, recruiting about 140 people between 2011 and 2013 for their research skills, and that a strong research showing helps boost its international reputation. “We were never doing it for the money,” he says. The REF is supposed to be about money: a good performance will win a larger slice of the research funding pie of nearly £2bn when the UK funding councils allocate grants in March, and will affect institutions’ allocations every year until the next REF results are out. But with all government departments under pressure to help reduce the deficit, the pie is likely to shrink. The government has refused to guarantee that it will continue to ringfence the science budget after the election, and there have been suggestions that it could direct more – or even all – of the money for research through the research councils, which concentrate on supporting specific projects. Crawford suggests that as the pot gets smaller, and universities begin to rely more on other sources of funding such as European grants and student fees, the value of the costly REF becomes questionable. “It was primarily about carving up the cake of public funding,” he says. “It has become less that and much more about reputational benchmarks.” Yet these benchmarks are becoming more important as competition grows to recruit top staff and students from around the world – something Cardiff University has recognised. It submitted a lower proportion of its research staff for this exercise, which helped it leap from 22nd to fifth place in terms of research quality. “We are hoping that international students and staff will see that Cardiff is in the top five research-excellent universities with some very, very big names,” says the vice-chancellor, Colin Riordan. “That’s very good company to be keeping,” The plan is now to expand the university, building on areas of research strength, which will mean recruiting more than 100 new researchers over the next five years, including some research stars. “I have already had one or two people who we wanted to attract and who weren’t sure and now are,” he says. He argues that reforms to higher education over the past five years, including increased tuition fees and abolishing controls on student numbers, have made universities’ reputation more important than ever. “It’s inevitable that over the next few years we are going to see institutions merge, some perhaps close or shrink,” he predicts. “The reforms have led to conditions in which REF changes can really make a difference.” Luke Georghiou, vice-president for research and innovation at the University of Manchester, predicts a significant transfer of resources into the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and the top London research universities of University College London, Imperial, Kings and the London School of Economics. He says Manchester’s drop in ranking for research power, from third to fifth, which would be reflected in lower resources, was “a transition we will have to manage”. The university’s overall increase in research income from all sources in recent years is more than the amount it stands to lose from the REF, he says, but “we haven’t got some hidden pot of money so it does mean we will have to operate more efficiently”. Changes to the UK’s higher education sector are also likely at subject level. The humanities and social sciences are particularly vulnerable, as a better-than-expected performance by the medical and life sciences has led to fears of less cash for everybody else. Mike Kelly, head of modern languages at the University of Southampton, says: “Every university is going to be looking at its portfolio of subjects over the next year and I think there are going to be various shakedowns. If subjects or departments have the perfect storm – their research isn’t well assessed and they are struggling for students – that’s where universities will say time to call it a day.” This could be bad news in some institutions for modern languages, which has been experiencing declining student demand. But he says disparities between discipline areas are not as great as in the last assessment exercise. More significant will be how departments within universities have performed relative to each other, with managers likely to concentrate resources on strong areas, rather than on trying to bring up weaker ones. They will also be taking a closer look at the impact their research is having outside academia. This was assessed in the REF for the first time, and for some institutions proved decisive in how they performed overall. Kelly foresees that presenting “impact stories” will become a new potential career for post-doctorates, while Crawford suggests that the ability to demonstrate the impact of work could join teaching, research and administration as a fourth essential element of an academic post. Rama Thirunamachandran, vice-chancellor of Canterbury Christ Church University and a former director of research at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, says that while many academics were sceptical about how far impact could be measured, the exercise has proved that it is possible. He would like to see it continue to be an important element in any future exercise, as long as it leaves room for researchers exploring uncharted territories. “One wouldn’t want researchers simply engaged in areas of research where they can clearly see what the potential benefits are in impact terms.” Whatever shuffling occurs following the REF – and he says every institution will be discussing investment, divestment and restructuring over the next few months – he argues that research funding here must keep up with that of other major industrialised economies. “Successful economies are those investing in research and innovation,” he says. “Not where universities are scrabbling over a decreasing pot.” |