RAE Results 2008
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 9:56 am. 0 comments
So it’s a big day in Higher Education. Universities have been working through the night to find out what the Santa called HEFCE have deposited in the stockings they left up marked “Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008”. The reward is not just prestige and reputation but a slice of the £1.5 billion annual research pie (although how this will be allocated will not be known until March).
For full information there is the dedicated RAE web site, and the Guardian provide their usual excellent analysis. You can also review our RHUL assessment. Particularly well done to our Music department who have 60% of their research rated as 4* (world leading), giving them an average of 3.450 and making them the top department for this unit of assessment. Economics and Drama were our two other departments with an average of over 3 and Biological Sciences are strongly ranked in comparison with others.
Now of course you can use statistics as a drunk would a lampost: for support rather than illumination so you can expect these figures to be spun furiously. HEFCE is careful to release results as quality profiles, not league tables, but as the Guardian points out this makes the raw data a bit arcande for those outside the HE sector, so of course many attempt to turn the data into league tables – and these will depend on which data is selected, how it is weighted and analysed to produce a grading. For example the Guardian table is on average grading putting us 23rd, but our table is on percentage of research rated 3* or above and that places us 18th (at least the one we are promoting our internal analysis also includes the table that ranks us 23rd on grade point average basis). We rise to 16th on a comparision of percentage of 4* research. So whichever way you look at it we’ve performed quite well.
The university I currently study with, the Open University, is 39th on either basis, which is a good result for such a teaching and learning focused institution. One of the big successes from the 2001 exercise is my first university, Queen Mary University of London who have leapt to 10/11th in the table.
I hope David Sweeney who heads up Research at HEFCE, one of my personal career mentors and a former colleague here at RHUL can now enjoy some wine and canapes and have a rest over Christmas, (and indeed everybody else who have directed much effort into the exercise this past year). After all in the New Year they’ve got to get back to figuring out what the Research Excellence Framework (REF) the successor to the RAE is going to look like.
