If you really don't want to know any more about the UK RAE, please ignore this message. HE funding nerds read on.
Terry Love has reminded me that I failed to include the RAE 6* rating in my quick summary - it's the post-hoc guinea (remember 1
guinea = 1.05 pounds sterling) in the research currency system and yet another example of the baroque tangle that we get into.
After the RAE there was concern at the clustering of departments in the 5 and 5* ratings so the government created a new category
(referred to as 6* but I don't know if that's the official name) which was those who had 5* continuously over the last two (or
maybe it was three?) RAE's. I hope that makes sense.
The new 2007 RAE system is completely different (while being much the same). We'll have ratings 1, 2, 3 & 4 which might be
similar to the old 3a, 4, 5 & 5* and departments will be given a profile based on ratings for individual outputs (still 4 outputs
per person in most cases) which might look like this:
University of Poppleton, Dept of Scientific Arts
15 research-active staff
30% of outputs grade 4
20% of outputs grade 3
40% of outputs grade 2
10% of outputs grade 1
and funding will probably be pro rata:
30% x 15 x tariff 4
20% x 15 x tariff 3
etc
The idea is to encourage lower rated researchers by removing the incentive for depts to exclude them in the old "all or nothing"
system. However the new system will inevitably create some sort of grade point average (officially from the Higher Education
Funding Council or unofficially by the Times Higher Ed Supplement) that will become the crude measure of your worth so we'll still
be looking at which lower rated researchers we can afford to include.
I hope that is clear, I'll be giving you a short test next week. At least it illustrates the way that the executive has to make
constant adjustments to prevent the system getting out of control.
best wishes from Sheffield
Chris Rust
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