Source:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402928


Our advice to officials merits some form of academic recognition

24 July 2008

The work of advising select committees is demanding and rigorous, and it 
deserves reward in the REF, argues Steven Barnett

Earlier this year, John Denham, the Universities Secretary, threw what 
he described as "a rock into the pond" by addressing the thorny issue of 
how to replace the outdated research assessment system.

Despite the Higher Education Funding Council for England's advanced 
plans for a new research excellence framework based on citations, 
research income and student numbers, Mr Denham's "rock" was to propose a 
fourth category: rewarding departments and academics who provide policy 
advice to Government and were, he said, undervalued.

My reaction at the time was a resounding "hear! hear!", but I was 
disqualified from responding publicly by my involvement in advising a 
parliamentary committee. For the past year, I and Mike Feintuck of the 
University of Hull were engaged as special advisers to the House of 
Lords Select Committee on Communications for its inquiry into media 
ownership. With the report now published, I can come out of the closet 
and offer Mr Denham a hearty and public pat on the back.

Mr Denham has identified a serious problem in higher education's growing 
love affair with metrics and, in particular, what we now like to call 
knowledge transfer. The principle of knowledge transfer is an excellent 
one: encourage the country's scholars to channel their thinking, 
analysis and insights into specialist areas that can be of direct 
benefit to the wider community.

If it is done properly, everyone benefits. Businesses and 
non-governmental organisations will become more productive and 
innovative as they incorporate ideas from the academy. And the 
universities benefit twice over: first, from an income boost to the 
relevant department and then from another income boost on the back of an 
RAE/REF score elevated by the very same knowledge-transfer projects. 
More cash and a better REF score: enough to bring a smile to any 
vice-chancellor's face.

Policy advice is just as time-consuming and offers the same benefits as 
all those other knowledge-transfer activities. Advising a select 
committee was fascinating, but it involves far more than writing a few 
e-mails and passing comment on a couple of documents. Advisers are 
intimately involved in the whole process from drawing up lists of 
suitable witnesses and drafting questions for evidence sessions to 
accompanying the committee on trips, surveying the relevant literature 
and helping to draft the final report.

On a personal level, it was unmissable - not many academics can claim to 
have met and posed questions to Rupert Murdoch. But in terms of reward 
and acknowledgement of the department's research input, the contribution 
is almost invisible: no citations and no money. Apart from a namecheck 
in the report, special advisers are non-persons because committee 
reports are the work of the chairman, signed off by the committee after 
due deliberation.

Constitutionally, that is the way it should be. But for universities 
that are enlightened enough to make space for this kind of knowledge 
transfer (and I am grateful that mine was), it is a double whammy. There 
is no juicy research contract and no metric to boost the research 
group's REF rating. In fact, it is a triple whammy: in the time spent 
generating questions for Lord Rothermere or trying to interpret the 
implications of a revised public interest test for a parliamentary 
committee, I could have been writing learned papers for refereed journals.

There are academics who advise civil servants, ministers, regulators and 
statutory bodies. Over the past 25 years, I have probably destroyed a 
small rainforest with written submissions or papers to ministers, select 
committees, public consultations, think-tanks, regulators and 
legislative committees. I know many other scholars who have done the 
same or more. None was allowable in the RAE, and there is apparently no 
appetite for change.

The problem is familiar: you cannot quantify policy advice because it is 
all too qualitative and fluffy. And it is perfectly true that you cannot 
apply metrics to an informal chat with the Secretary of State or to a 
side of briefing notes that summarises relevant journal references for a 
Permanent Secretary or to oral evidence in front of a select committee.

But with a bit of effort and political will, arrangements could be made 
to peer review, say, formal submissions to government departments or 
public consultations or legislative committees. We need some urgent 
creative thinking to find ways of recognising that the academy can and 
does make a significant contribution to a more informed policy 
environment, and of rewarding those departments that facilitate it. John 
Denham was absolutely right, and I hope he has some good policy advisers 
(preferably from the academy) to help him convince the funding council.

Postscript :

Steven Barnett is professor of communications, University of Westminster.

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