Sorry - we tend to assume that we will all have RAE written on our hearts
when we die. It is the research assessment exercise, thought up by one of
our least-lamented secretaries of state for education to fund universities
according to research output. It was apparently designed to ensure that
undergraduates were taught by research-active staff; inevitably (as we all
said at the time) it has achieved precisely the opposite, as prolific
writers are far too valuable to be wasted on History 101. It has also
created a vicious circle in which small but aspiring institutions (such as
mine) cannot afford the staff time or library resources to mount major
research programmes, so we don't get the funding, so we can't afford ...
while our colleagues in other institutions romp away writing 5 books a year
and improving their cvs. And while it has produced some good work, I think
we'd all agree it has also placed a premium on verbosity and theorising -
resulting in the inflation of publishers' lists - putting further strain on
our library budgets - (must sign off now - script to be finished and
delivered to publisher by Easter in time for the current assessment round -
)
Maddy
Dr Madeleine Gray
Department of Humanities and Science
UWCN
'Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought'
(and so I sometimes think is writing)
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