David Pearson

David Pearson Lancaster University [email protected]

Responses to the Research Assessment Exercise

Higher Education Close Up 2 Lancaster University 16-18 July 2001 2

Abstract

Using data from depth interviews with academics from chemistry, physics, philosophy, and music, the paper explores how academics talk about their everyday experiences of the Research Assessment Exercise. While a minority of informants view the

RAE in a positive light, most informants and the issues they discuss are classified as ambiguous or negative. The different kinds of responses are explored and academics’ narratives are considered in the light of their disciplinary identities and career paths. Many of the responses are common to all disciplines; others show subtle commonalities within disciplines. 3

Introduction

The focus on the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in British higher education represents one strand of a PhD project exploring ways of talking about academic cultures.

Several points of pressure in academic life were chosen as the focus of the project, including the RAE, teaching assessment, the doctorate, and numerous other topics surrounding the everyday experiences of academics. Topics such as these encourage academics to talk fluently and generate rich data about academic life and current policy concerns. The research draws from several traditions, including sociology of higher education (e.g. Becher 1989;

Clark 1993; Deem and Brehony 2000; Fulton 1996; Trowler 1998), ethnographic work on the professional socialization of academics (e.g. Delamont et al. 2000) and areas within sociology of science and technology (e.g. Collins 1992; Delamont and Atkinson 2001;

Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). Research specifically on the RAE, though limited, has grown since the 1996 RAE. Studies include critical analyses of the RAE using Marxist frameworks

(Harvie 2000; Lee and Harley 1998) or perspectives on the culture of surveillance and audit stemming from the neo-liberal impetus of the Thatcher government (e.g. Nisbet 2000; Shore and Wright 1999).

The RAE is an emblem for today’s university; it is the surface of an audit culture that values competition, big research grants, publication prestige, and the ability of academics to package themselves as desirable commodities through the various channels of academic discourse (conferences, research centres, editorial committees, learning and teaching initiatives, the Internet, and so on). Narratives in response to this culture are not unified.

Some academics are up-front in their commitment to bringing more industrial-style accountability into academia; others show a curious combination of cynicism and glee in demonstrating their abilities as academic spin-doctors; many more are highly critical for reasons that are surprisingly diverse. Of course, some people attempt to be indifferent to the 4 process, and others try desperately to isolate themselves from the mass as far as possible.

Some narratives can be understood in relation to the academics’ disciplinary norms and career aspirations.

The present findings are based on depth interviews with academics from four disciplines (chemistry, physics, philosophy, and music). The paper explores responses from academics when they were asked to reflect on the extent to which the RAE affects the shape of their disciplines and their everyday lives. Responses were classified to reflect basic positive and negative attitudes towards the RAE. As the vast majority of responses (and informants) are ambiguous or negative, responses are classified further, according to themes.

These responses and themes form the narrative for the paper, beginning with the minority views of the RAE as positive.

Positive Perspectives

Entirely positive narratives on the RAE are rare. Here are two academics who regard the RAE as an almost unblemished procedure. The first, a physical scientist, is typical of the minority of scientists who held research posts outside academia before taking up senior university positions. Such people often appear less harassed by the idea of accountability.

They often take it as the norm, sometimes even respecting and desiring it. Their views suggest an acceptance that policing research output is both effective and morally right. Here,

Professor Redfern repeats his point that the RAE measures what “you ought to be doing anyway.”

The RAE influences what you do because it makes you think about what you publish, the way you publish, and it makes you think about interactions with people outside your own department, which are going to not only enhance your work but enhance the perception of your work. So I think it influences lots of things that you do to not only try and improve the quality of your work but also make that demonstrable. … I think a lot of the things that the RAE leads you to put stress on are things you should put stress on anyway if you’re a good researcher and doing good research. 5

… … the things that you need to do to perform well in the RAE are things that you ought to be doing anyway. … And I think anyway, as a scientist, there’s no point in obtaining new information, new knowledge, gaining new insights, unless you share them with other people. And so I would argue that you’re not really doing science effectively if you’re not publishing your work. … whenever you’re publishing something, you’re exposing yourself to external scrutiny and comment, which is also important and that’s how you refine your ideas as well. But I think you can’t claim to be doing science if you’re having great thoughts and keeping them to yourself. … So all our work goes into highly regarded journals, so I suppose that’s the biggest impact of the RAE: making you think hard about that, but again I think, you know, you ought to be doing that anyway. … But I think it’s emphasized what we all ought to be doing anyway is trying to do good science. And I think it’s made that very visible and has put that right at the top of the agenda.

The second academic, Professor Shawcross, is a cognitive scientist, interviewed during the piloting phase of the research. His words succinctly construct life since the RAE as brighter than before the RAE. Note from his final sentence however that his optimism is not without reservation.

How the RAE has changed things … is that it’s resulted in far far better facilities in my area of research within the department. It’s also resulted in … the department growing and I’ve got around me a number of colleagues now with similar interests to mine which I didn’t have before. So I just think my research facilities and the research environment has improved beyond all expectation as a result of the Research Assessment Exercise. Much as I hate to say it, I think it’s been a really good thing for me.

A later comment shows a surprising shift in his perception of the status of research. He is contrasting the present with the 1970s and early 1980s, thinking further back than Professor

Redfern, but his perception that he was marginal as a researcher is surprising to those only familiar only with the post-RAE era:

When I came to this university I was regarded as an oddity because I was interested in research and … some of my colleagues certainly regarded me as an oddity. But now that’s not the case. I feel valued for my contribution to research. 6

Ambiguous Responses

Most individuals are found to be ambiguous in their responses: a positive or negative response is normally part of a conflicting narrative which identifies good and evil qualities and struggles to reach an overall verdict. Many of the perceived processes and effects of the

RAE are themselves ambiguous; it is not always possible to say whether the influences are good or bad. Several dimensions of the RAE display such traits.

The Academic Climate

First, academics from all disciplines talk about a general sharpening of awareness in all aspects of their research, including the political landscapes of their disciplines, their performance (both quality and quantity), and difference (between individuals, departments, journals, etc.). Laden with tacit knowledge, such consciousness is a hallmark of today’s successful academic. Yet some academics talk about a kind of reification of the valued criteria, as if to challenge the motives behind the presentation exercises. As physicist

Professor Wigmore notes, “you begin to believe the system for its own virtues rather than why you put it there.” Others, such as Professor Robinson, a chemist, hint at this reification when they contrast perceptions with reality or question the value of criteria which they consider to be insufficient or unstable:

I think the biggest change is in a perception and that is that it is now essential to perform and express in manners that clearly indicate performance quality or extent of performance against the criteria that are defined, which do change from time to time. … So the RAE is just another one of these quality assessment mechanisms.

Academic Productivity, Self-Awareness, and Pressure

Academics talk about how the RAE has sharpened people’s efforts, productivity and self-awareness as researchers. There is recognition that competent researchers are motivated to produce more than they might otherwise have produced, while less active or inactive 7 researchers are coerced into producing sometimes valuable output, or forced to change their role or leave the profession. “Pressure” is perhaps the word that academics use most when they moan about the RAE. Displaying one’s work, being rewarded for productivity, and being “geared up” to current discourse might all be desirable, but they require the pressure of surveillance, which might be undesirable. But pressure can be a good thing, especially when it leads to worthwhile activity or publications that would not otherwise have been produced.

Yet many people feel there is undue emphasis on productivity and numbers of publications.

The two sides of this tension are keenly felt by Professor Adey, a philosopher:

I think it’s very very doubtful indeed whether that increase in volume has been matched by any increase in quality at all. In fact I’m rather doubtful. I would have said that the average – it’s a very loose thing to say, but I mean the average quality of the stuff that comes out I would have said by and large has gone down. And it becomes harder and harder to find the good things because there’s so much more coming out that you don’t quite know where sometimes to go to find it. … I would say that, you know, sure, it acted as a spur to some able and non-productive colleagues to make them begin to produce … And that I think was probably a good thing: good thing for them and good thing for the discipline.

This feeling that there is a new sense of pressure and the need to achieve is especially characteristic of academics in the arts disciplines, particularly music. Take two music professors for example:

Prof Rendle: … it’s woken us all up to the competitive world outside: that we can’t sit down and meander through life doing some teaching and doing some research, and if it’s published, all well and good. So I think it’s bucked up a lot of people. I could use a different initial to the word “bucked” up a lot of people as well.

Prof Eyers: … one has to be far more organized about research and far more up-front about it and far more up-front about making grant applications. It’s actually much more exciting than it used to be, I have to say.

To hear a word as positive as “exciting” in the context of the RAE is rare. Professor Eyers also had something to say about bringing out the potentials of research-inactive people:

… it makes people produce more; it actually encourages some people to publish who wouldn't have published earlier but have things to say. Now that is a positive difference. And I can think of one book that has been published recently that probably wouldn’t have – well, the other side of the coin is that he probably wouldn’t have found a publisher ten years ago because it’s on a fairly abstruse subject. On the 8

other hand it’s a thoroughly worthwhile book. And that particular person who is coming up to retirement will I think never have published. So the RAE has had a positive impact in that respect.

In a similar vein, two philosophers talked about the incentives associated with productivity. The idea of reward and equity is an important dimension to the positive types of response.

Prof Adey: [The RAE] acted as a spur to some able and non-productive colleagues to make them begin to produce and sometimes that was just a case actually of their getting things out of their bottom drawers that they’d had for ages but hadn’t actually just thought of putting into print. And that I think was probably a good thing: good thing for them and good thing for the discipline.

Prof Paddison: It is likely to maintain high levels of research activity, which I suppose is in some ways good. It’s likely to involve funding for people who succeed in some measure in research by way of conference visiting for instance: that has been better funded at this university in the last ten years than it previously was.

Like having a sharp consciousness of academic politics, productivity is a hallmark of success, but is not immune from academics’ concerns about reifying quantity. Philosopher

Professor Olbrich denied that the RAE had brought more production or efficiency. But in stating that his discipline is “more professionally geared up,” he illuminated the important distinction between the RAE as an audit exercise and the RAE as a real influence on productivity:

It’s made it more competitive; more – well I suppose more professionally geared up in a way, but not more productive or efficient.

What is perhaps surprising is that, although for him the RAE might be nothing more than a public display of his pre-existing virtuosity, he fails to acknowledge that for other academics, it really has “bucked them up,” if not “fucked them up.” This view of the RAE as a kind of presentation rather than a cause of productivity is characteristic of somebody who has been a prolific writer since long before the RAE. This strong self-motivation is also seen among scientists – particularly those who have worked in industrial or national laboratories – though 9 they tend to be more conscious than the previous philosopher of how the RAE has goaded less-motivated colleagues. Take leading physicist Professor Goslin for example:

Maybe one thing that’s happened is sort of cleaning out – well, I know for sure it has … nationwide, there are fewer research-inactive people … they’ve been swept out somehow; the RAE has identified them and they’ve gone! Well, either they’ve become research-active or they’ve disappeared. But most likely they’ve disappeared I think.

What is shared by this subset of academics (prolific and industrious researchers) is a feeling that the RAE has not influenced their productivity. For some, this is clearly a good thing because they are already producing, and they think others ought to be. But not all informants are positive about this influence: some are cool about the procedure; others resent it. To illustrate both types, here are two scientists. The first comments on how he was monitored at a major national laboratory. The second is a highly motivated individual who had wide research experience both within and outside universities and at a European university outside the UK.

Prof Andrews: I mean basically having to justify your existence every year in terms of writing reports and seeing what you’ve done and why it was worth doing and so on. … Obviously once a year seems very frequent but, again, frankly, it wasn’t that big a burden and I think it certainly made you think once a year about what you’d been up to and whether you’d wasted your time or whether you’d done something productive. You know, maybe it occupied two or three days writing a report, but two or three days out of a year is no big a deal.

Prof Stoate: It makes no difference to my – because of the RAE, it doesn’t affect my – the way that I work. I mean I carry on doing things as I want to. But it does affect – you think at the back of your mind “well somebody is keeping an eye on my publications” and I don’t like that … and somebody’s keeping an eye on me sending in grant applications, which I also don’t like. I feel that I should send in grant applications as I want and not as the department wants and not just for the sake of it. So it doesn’t actually affect the sort of things I do or the amount of work which I do, but it affects the background – the environment within which I work and the feeling that everything’s being tabulated, everything’s being controlled. And I dislike that.

The second scientist also illustrates what might be described as the surveillance theme of the

RAE, a concern that is found frequently among liberal-minded academics who value the free inquiry traditionally associated with universities. Many share Professor Redfern’s view that 10 the RAE merely measures “what you ought to be doing anyway,” but, unlike Redfern, they often object to the system on the grounds that it casts the shadow of “big brother” over hard- working academics, stifling part of their instinctive motivation. Professor Ewins, a philosopher, contrasts the past and present. His talk of the diminished pleasure of research is typical of philosophers, as well as his vocabulary (“competitiveness,” “rivalry”).

It’s not really something that personally is worrying for me because I’ve published quite well and regularly anyway, but you do have the sense that there’s this requirement to publish things even if you don’t feel that what you’re writing is particularly valuable in itself, or inspiring or interesting. Still you’ve got to think in terms of actually getting the four things out, and that takes some of the pleasure out of it. I mean, it makes it more of a chore; less of a pleasurable thing to do. … it doesn’t add to the general atmosphere of well-being; it takes away from that. … You’re very conscious that there’s a rivalry and a competitiveness that probably didn’t exist at least to the same extent before … So I don’t think it’s helped in any way … this sense of the kind of bullying presence behind you. I’m sure … most academics want to publish anyway; if they’ve got ideas they want to publish them anyway and being told that they’ve got to as if they’re little schoolboys trying to evade their homework just doesn’t help.

Time Scale

If monitoring seems to be the antithesis of the pleasure of research for humanities people, scientists have equivalent concerns about the RAE blocking long-term goals and stifling high-quality projects by forcing output to satisfy short-term publication. The narrative of this head of a science department generally has a pro-RAE flavour, but he recognized the influence of departmental status on how the RAE impacts a department’s research goals (the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy for which the RAE has been criticized). In other words, it is easy for a department strong in RAE terms to carry on in the same way, but the long-term efforts of weaker departments risk being stifled if they do not produce output in the short term.

What isn’t getting done is probably the real long-term vision stuff at the moment I would say and I think that’s what’s being closed off. What people are doing is things which are going to yield results. Okay, you could say that the top universities – they’d probably still have people with breadth of vision who couldn’t care less about 11

an RAE exercise because they’re the best and that’s it and so they will still carry on with looking for academic excellence, but for the rank and file, they’re really being pushed to do things within a time scale, and consequently, things which are very long- term and may not pay off are probably not being done or even being chased.

Similar concerns about time scale are found in the humanities, albeit of a different nature.

Philosopher Dr O’Connor’s concerns are typical of those in the humanities who write monographs, particularly of a biographical ilk:

… this book on [a particular philosopher] is taking me years. It’s taken me years really and the end is not in sight. And of course for the RAE, that’s absolutely unthinkable. I’ve got a friend who teaches philosophy at another university and their RAE rating actually went down in the last exercise, which is a kind of heinous sort of crime really and their head of department called them all in and he told them not to write books. He said, “look, the problem with books is they take too long.” He said “you’ve gotta write articles; articles are more manageable; you can finish quicker; get it published.” So that’s one of the insanities of the RAE – that it’s having that kind of effect: don’t write books; too ambitious!

The RAE is one of the many time frames in academic life that are insensitive to disciplinary differences. In analysing the everyday life of graduate students and supervisors,

Delamont, Atkinson, and Parry (2000) highlight many of the other cycles and rhythms of academia – such as terms, semesters, lengths of degree schemes, student recruitment dates, and ceremonies – making anthropologically strange their rigidity and arbitrariness. Though few academics are explicitly aware of the taken-for-granted cycles, some object to mechanisms like the RAE on the grounds that it is insensitive to their needs or inappropriately modelled on other disciplines or styles of research. This applies to some arts and humanities people who resent a mechanism they perceive as inherited from the sciences, as well as academics from any discipline who object to what they see as bias towards short- term research in the RAE, and those who believe the RAE should be sensitive to individual circumstances such as maternity or teaching and administrative loads. 12

The Labour Market

A further set of ambiguous responses to the RAE concern several aspects of the academic labour market and academic hierarchy. Competition is tense and promotion is closely related to publication. To gain security and opportunities for mobility, younger academics need to publish sooner than ever before. During the run-up to the 1996 RAE the university employment situation was widely compared to a football transfer market as big names criss-crossed from one university to another as part of a frantic attempt by departments to boost their research ratings or reinforce weaknesses before the final submissions. Clearly, this can be exciting for the individuals involved, but most disciplines have had their share of controversial appointments. Chemistry is a particularly good example. The chemists interviewed for this research talk of how certain senior appointments have been regarded as premature and the discipline employs an unusually high proportion of professors in their late thirties and early forties. Younger academics are either excited or daunted by this; senior people are often slightly perplexed or resentful. To illustrate the latter, take two chemists, both around age 50:

Prof Lewis: We’ve lost three people … They’re off to somewhere else in order for that other place to improve their status and so the, you know, the merry-go-round goes round! So, yeah, it has made a lot of difference from that point of view and people are moving around more I think, which, as I say, is probably not a bad thing although, as I say, at one time you knew your position and, okay, if you got forty publications then you weren’t going to get a senior lectureship anywhere, so you stayed where you were and that was it. But now, if you think you’re quite good, then you’ll, you know, you’ll look around and if you can get someone to put you on a shortlist or to offer you something, then the normal thing to do – you go back and say “look I’ve got a post somewhere else offered and, you know, what are you gonna do for me?!” [laugh]

Prof Slater: I suppose in one sense I worry a bit about the sort of status business sometimes relative to the past, but good luck to ‘em because the university salaries are so dismal. … I sometimes think “cor, you know, you haven’t really done it yet.” I suppose it’s a bit of envy really – the sort of time I had to wait for mine, the number of papers you used to have to get, whereas now you get it a lot quicker, but it’s good luck to them in the sense that the salaries are so pitiful compared with chemistry in industry. 13

Legitimization of Research

One of perceived areas of change that is most exciting to academics relates to the kind of legitimization of research mentioned by Professor Shawcross, the enthusiastic cognitive scientist above. In today’s climate, it is always surprising to hear highly competent academics portraying a gloomy world of the past where what they did best – research – was marginalized by the university community. This appears most relevant to individualistic styles of research in the humanities. One musicologist talked about his early research efforts and the lack of moral and financial support for the research side of his work:

Not twenty years ago, research in musicology was frowned upon by a lot of senior members of the profession, not least here – especially research into early music, which is what I do – “old” music it was called, pejoratively. And I know when I was finishing off my PhD and I wanted money for microfilms, … I was told by my head of department … it must be the last ever application I made for funds. But things have changed – I mean – sorry I – sounds as though I’m running him down – he was a very admirable man in many ways, but he’s one of the old school of music professors. So things have changed radically from that position to where we are now.

It is common for both philosophers and music historians to talk about a kind of legitimization of their research in a less direct way – not so much in terms of research funding, but as research dissemination opportunities (conferences, new journals, and other kinds of forums for displaying scholarly prowess). One musical academic expressed concern that such research dissemination is eliminating other community or student-centred activities such as music festivals. But overall, people seem to enjoy knowing that while they build small empires and display their work in progress, they are benefiting their departments and careers more than ever before.

Teaching and the RAE

A major group of tensions concerns teaching and its relationship to research and the

RAE. Academics seldom question the possibility and desirability of linking teaching and research, but they rarely regard the correlation as automatic or essential. The topic was 14 addressed directly in the interviews. Informants were asked both about the RAE in relation to teaching and, more generally, whether a teacher is likely to be better because he or she is research-active. Their responses show that fundamental to the issue is the distinction between technical and indeterminate knowledge. They also show important disciplinary distinctions in how knowledge is produced and transmitted.

Regarding an academic’s competence at teaching and research, most informants conform to the view that the two activities are not mutually dependent but tend to bring benefits when they are practised simultaneously. Some of course reinforce the ideology of the interconnection between good teaching and good research; the two might not be inseparable, but they tend to go together in an individual. But there is general agreement that people exist who are competent at one but not the other. Physicist Professor Wigmore clearly articulates the possibilities before laying out what he believes are the links between teaching and research:

… you have to admit that good researchers are not necessarily good teachers. But it also can be true that some good researchers are extremely good teachers, okay? As well as you can have some people who are not research active who are very good teachers and some people who are not research active who are bloody lousy at teaching as well, okay? This is motherhood’s statement but it sometimes seems to be forgotten. Now, the advantage of having research-active staff who teach – there’s several that we believe. One is that we believe that doing research keeps you sharp in some sense. It’s like doing a five-finger exercise if you’re a concert pianist. It keeps the mind active, and if you’re applying physics in a research environment or something like that or at least in scholarship it will keep you keen and that’s probably a good thing. It also means that we can refresh our courses, both in the sense that the most recent results can go in. I get very upset if in a given year in my first-year course I can’t introduce something new that’s only been discovered or the importance has come to the fore in the last year. And I can do that normally right from research … you get to hear of things and you get those in, okay?

He tries to explicate the transmission of tacit knowledge in his subject by using the metaphor of a performing musician doing technical exercises. Academics from all disciplines agree that there is something about doing research that enhances teaching, but they find it difficult to say exactly what it is. Words often become vague and bland when 15 someone tries to describe the contents of the “black box.” For example, Professor Jenkins, another physicist:

I think perhaps the question to ask is, why is it that in a university – what is the case for saying that teachers should be involved in research? I think it’s that it gives you a feel for the subject – what is important and what is not important – if you are actually practising the subject alongside teaching it. Do you understand what I mean?

A few academics also say their research is inspired by students or the experience of teaching. Here are examples from the arts and sciences:

Prof Eyers (musicologist): From my point of view [the RAE has] had a neutral impact because research and teaching always were related. And in fact I remember developing books out of seminars that I ran and it was always a very useful experience to have feedback from students and to know what they were thinking about; it sharpened up what you were thinking about. It has always been part and parcel of the teaching. I don’t think the RAE’s had any impact on it at all.

Prof Driscoll (physicist): That’s an interesting connection. It’s not one that sort of hits me in the eye really. Now I say that partly as a person that’s always believed that there is a very direct connection between teaching and research. I’ve never taught a course where I haven’t learnt something of value or refreshed my mind about something of value to my research, okay? And so, to be honest, I’ve always found that the movement is in that direction. I can remember teaching a course that, at the outset, sounded appallingly boring … and I decided to teach it in a different way using different mathematical methods and within six months or so I was using those mathematical methods to deal with a … project that I was involved in. So I’ve always found a tremendous migration from teaching to research …

Humanities people (and occasionally scientists) distinguish between researchers and scholars, arguing that somebody who does not conduct research is often an excellent scholar and an excellent teacher. Philosophers in particular talk about the need for people who can discuss and comment on work both for students and staff. One philosopher who had worked in the United States talked of the jokes that were made there about leading philosophers, many of whom had not published for four years and would therefore be in a problematic position if working in the British system.

Not surprisingly, criticisms against RAE “strikers” are mostly from lecturers who are struggling to conform to RAE demands, though leading researchers occasionally object to the pecking order produced by the competitive “meritocracy” of the RAE and peer review. One 16 might assume that successful academics take pride in their achievements and enjoy the prestige and power of promotion, but this is not always the case. A prolific philosopher expressed feelings of guilt and argued that the division of labour prior to RAE was fairer:

Under the old system or non-system – whatever it was – everyone did a certain amount of teaching. Those who wanted to do writing did so – produced a fair bit – not as much as they do now probably, but, you know, it used to work. It didn’t cause resentment, at least as far as I can remember and could tell at the time ... So you could get on with your own thing; you could produce books; you didn’t feel bad about it. Now I actually feel bad about producing lots of stuff because if other people aren’t producing so much, it looks as if you’re just trying to advance your own career at their expense because people become extremely competitive.

The issue of teaching loads is divisive and familiar to most academics at research-led universities. Some resent a system that enables people to “buy out” their teaching; others accept it, perhaps reassured by the size of the staff pool which enables adequate teaching.

In the sciences, there are additional issues relating to teaching, given the intricate relationship between research funds and equipment used for teaching. For instance, a grade 5 chemistry department it more likely than a 3A to possess the best state-of-the-art spectrometer, which will be used to demonstrate principles to undergraduates. Final-year undergraduates, particularly in chemistry, also often contribute directly to the research projects of their supervisors.

Regarding the specific relationship between teaching and the RAE, the only certainty is that academics are divided on whether it benefits students. The temporal conflict is keenly felt by most academics and the RAE adds to the non-teaching workload, but it is also possible that the presence of the RAE enhances some of the positive links between teaching and research. Professor Olbrich, the philosopher, spells out the typical controversy (followed by his own verdict):

Well, there are two arguments with this. One is that good research goes along with good teaching because you get people who are sort of up to date with cutting-edge scholarship: doing lots of reading; a keen active interest in it; involved in the subject; so their teaching benefits. The other is that people who are really research active don’t have time to put lots of effort into their teaching. So, you know, they’ll do the 17

teaching alright as required, but they won’t be around to talk to students and, you know, to update their reading lists, and so forth, so, I don’t know. I think it’s that latter argument that most often really applies, and much more so after the introduction of the RAE.

Negative Responses

In addition to the notions of pressure and competitiveness already explored, which have both positive and negative associations, many academics talk of the pressures of the

RAE in entirely negative ways. Indeed, the workload that comes with planning, publicising and monitoring research is perhaps the most frequent complaint relating to the RAE and is found in all four disciplines, as the following examples show. The chemist in the first extract is very clear in his belief that some RAE-related pressures are beneficial, while others are entirely negative.

Prof Robinson (chemist): The cost of teaching undergraduates in chemistry is probably about the highest of any subject except the medical-related subjects. … The result is that over the last few years and for quite some years, there has been virtually no departmental support for research. In other words, it means that if you don’t pull in your own money, you don’t work. Now that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing because we have to pull in money, but it does mean that funding is always fickle; even for the best, it’s fickle. And for new starters – new lecturers – don’t have any funding at all and realistically it takes them several years to get it: they’ve gotta become established first. How do you accommodate that? There is a big dilemma there and the institution is not supporting that. Now if the institution wants to support departments to achieve better grades, it’s not addressing that need in that way; it might be addressing many others. But that’s a big problem. What it’s meant is that it’s made people much more aggressive in pulling in cash – okay? – for research. Now, that in itself isn’t a bad thing. What can be a bad thing is that the need to generate cash perverts and perturbs your research goals and that often is a bad thing because what we become is Jacks of all trades, masters of none; effectively prostitutes for contract research. And that is not science; at best it’s technology, but it’s not where the new ideas for wealth creation are gonna come from. And I think that’s a very serious effect of all this.

Prof Wigmore (physicist): What I think is upsetting a lot of people is the fact of all these peripheral things you’ve been referring to like Research Assessment Exercise, like quality – teaching quality assessment and all the stuff that’s gone with them – that has meant that you’re spending more time filling in forms and doing administrative work of various kinds and not doing the straight teaching or the straight research which is why one came into this in the beginning. … What gets people pissed off is the fact that they did not go into this profession to do what they are now doing. And 18

that’s why there is a certain amount of discontent. … Administrators are very necessary in order to maintain the thing and there are people who are good at administration, but maybe administrators should be doing the administration and the researchers and teachers should be getting on with the researching and teaching.

Prof Paddison (philosopher): Well, [the RAE] probably doesn’t make me work very greatly longer hours because I’ve always been doing research which I enjoyed and saw as part of my role, but I think it has very considerably affected a lot of other people’s workload. However, one of the changes around here that is affected by it is the need to make research applications and encouragement to produce such applications, partly, in the name of RAE objectives, and that does very markedly add to daytime workloads.

Prof Eyers (musicologist): [The RAE] does mean that you’ve got to plan much more rigorously; and as far as day-to-day life goes, well, it’s not the research that produces the pressures – I have to clear this – it’s the administration that produces the unwanted pressures now: the enormous amounts of paperwork that come from having to account for everything you do, just in case you might be hauled into the Old Bailey and made to stand trial for it.

This set of concerns also demarcates clearly between the often enjoyable activity of research and the burdensome procedures designed to measure output. Such concerns are closely linked to the commonly-held view that the satisfaction of being an academic has dropped considerably as a result of external monitoring (and other parallel developments such as the rise in student numbers).

Perhaps more alarming is the revelation that many academics perceive the RAE to be having detrimental effects on the practice of research and the quality of its outcomes. A commonly-held perception is that the growth of the RAE has seen a reduction in intellectual freedom. This view manifests itself in all disciplines, but the issues differ slightly between the sciences and humanities. Scientists talk mostly of the increasing need to apply for industrial funding, which limits the amount of pure, intellectually-motivated research. Like

Professor Robinson, many scientists find themselves having to “prostitute” themselves for technological contract research. Humanities academics talk of restriction of slightly different kinds – as if their intellectual freedom to explore has somehow been confined to the structures of research favoured by the RAE. Although Professor Adey struggles to capture 19 precisely what he thinks he has lost, his words express very well the feeling of restriction very well:

I think as I experience the RAE personally, it made me feel much more under pressure to work with very definite publishing outcomes in view. I felt much less able to read around; to keep discussion papers; to indeed think of – you know – putting on – you know – new lecture courses on – if you like – a speculative basis in a sort of free and unstructured way, because – you know – as I’ve just said – of the sense of the need to focus on publishing outcomes of the work I did and I have to say that personally I didn’t find this altogether welcome. I could see that in some ways it meant that I – and I think others – worked in a more focused and in a more productive way if – you know – productive means – you know – actually delivering written work on the paper. But at the same time I felt it – to a degree – that it forced on me a narrowing of activity of a kind that I didn’t actually welcome personally and I’m not convinced was academically all that beneficial, because I think this – you know – what I call this more speculative and unstructured reading and writing actually had a lot of not so easily quantifiable benefits in terms of – you know – coming across things that you wouldn’t otherwise have come across and so on and just widening your interests and things of that sort.

His last few lines also suggest that systems of quantifying behaviour sometimes lead to a loss of the indeterminate processes that are nevertheless beneficial – essential perhaps – to the acquisition of certain kinds of knowledge.

Another perceived effect to the detriment of research is the tendency for academics to choose short-term research programmes which easily create publications. Defenders of the

RAE deny that the procedure encourages short-termism, claiming that people can publish technical notes, test results, or single-issue articles at every stage of a long-term project.

Whether or not the RAE is sensitive to the needs of those engaged in long-term research, it appears that many are influenced by the perception that short-term strategies are more sensible in the RAE climate.

This perception is especially common among academics in the humanities. For both philosophers and musicologists, the extensive monograph – often of a biographical nature – is a traditional publication format and many researchers’ careers are driven by a long-term interest in a particular genre or a historical period or figure. Some claim they have put off or 20 even abandoned these endeavours in an attempt to strengthen their submissions for the next

A complex set of concerns surround issues of measurement and validity in the RAE.

As with league tables and the allocation of funding in any sector, the use of the RAE raises questions about fairness from all areas of the sector. Interestingly, it is the humanities people who most commonly raise objections. Some object to what they perceive as a rigid model of assessing publication output inherited from the natural sciences; others perceive the resulting hierarchies as arbitrary or damaging (a view also shared by some scientists).

The RAE is just one of many topics that help to crystallise the meaning of academic life. These responses to the RAE show that in broad terms, academics’ experiences are comparable across disciplines, while a closer exploration reveals subtle differences in how academics think and talk about their everyday work. 21

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