I have just seen the ILT newsletter extracts re. physicists in ILT. I think
there will be a considerable increase in membership later this year from all
branches of science as preparation for the RAE become complete.
Reasons I have heard for joining are:-
1/ Career improvement; it looks good on the CV.
2/ Accreditation will be required eventually anyway, joining is easy at
present.
2/ The university is currently subsidising membership. If newspaper league
tables start including "proportion of staff in ILT" this practice may
increase.
I suspect that man disciplines do not realise the funding implications
of RAE. The differential distribution of wealth is quite staggering. For
example, a grade 5 department (say physics) can get more money per staff
member than they cost, so starting with more professors than honours
students, they can employ another twenty or so staff, and end up with an
even bigger budget surplus (but they better stay grade 5!). On the other
hand, a grade 3a department may have to get to a student FTE : staff ratio
of around 24:1 to balance their notional books, similar to a grammar school
(which still exist around here). Both nationally and sometimes within
institutions, the RAE is designed with negative feedback to favour the rich
and restrict the poor, and create a two level system
Someone who cannot buy a new PC from grant money may be still using a 486
with windows 3.11, reading this in Netscape 2. Teaching simply has zero
priority before RAE.
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