Thanks to all those who responded to this request. I think the responses have tailed
off now, so it's time to recap back to the list. There was a clear winner. The actual
moment of genesis for the RAE is recounted in delicious detail here:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YSMQBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA97
If that link doesn't work, it's p.97-98 of: Kogan, Maurice and Stephen Hanney. 2000.
Reforming Higher Education. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Here's what I've written based on it, for the book intro I'm putting together:
===============================
The RAE, first discussed as a research selectivity exercise, was a product of its
time, of civil service mandarins conjuring policies in evening lamplight, over steak
and claret. The genesis of the RAE is retold in delicious detail in Kogan & Hanney
(ibid. pp.97–98). They quote Christopher Ball, then Warden of Keble College, Oxford,
recounting his conversations with Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, chairman of the University
Grants Committee, and David Phillips, chairman of the Advisory Board for the Research
Councils (ABRC). “[We] used to have dinner together, and plan our … strategy. One
evening, Peter said, ‘… I can no longer defend the finding of universities … without
real accountability to government … why does the university system need all these
unspecific funds? …’ … So we discussed it and I suppose at that dinner we invented
the research selectivity exercise.” The anecdote goes on to note that selectivity had
originally only been intended for the relatively expensive science and technology
subjects, but that the “heads of the disciplinary group in social studies and arts”
said they “can’t be left out. It would appear to the public that our research is
unimportant.” And so a sense of challenged legitimacy, concern about appearing
trivial, and perhaps some bridled egos, led to what might seem a counter-intuitive
acceptance of evaluation metrics by the entire research community.
===============================
Other relevant resources, either given to me in responses, or that I found by
following references and other leads in them, are as follows:
Anderson, Robert. 2010. The 'Idea of a University' today. History & Policy. London:
Institute for Public Policy Research.
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-idea-of-a-university-today
Brown, Roger and Helen Carasso. 2013. Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK
Higher Education. London: Routledge.
Bence, Valerie and Charles Oppenheim. 2005. The Evolution of the UK’s Research
Assessment Exercise: Publications, Performance and Perceptions. Journal of
Educational Administration and History 37(2): 137–155.
(A version is also available here:
https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/1804/1/benceevolution.pdf)
Chowdry, Haroon and Luke Sibieta. 2011. Trends in education and schools spending.
Institute for Fiscal Studies. http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn121.pdf
Jump, Paul. 2013. “Evolution of the REF”. Times Higher Education 17 October 2013.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/evolution-of-the-ref/2008100.fullarticle
Olssen, Mark and Michael A. Peters. 2005. Neoliberalism, higher education and the
knowledge economy: from the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education
Policy 20(3): 313–345.
(This is still the most read article in that journal!)
Universities UK. 2013. The funding Environment for universities: An assessment.
http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/Documents/2013/FundingEnvironmentForUniversities.pdf
And for those interested in what I'm putting together, it's a book about
sociolinguistic research and the ascendant buzzword 'impact'. Some details here:
https://sites.google.com/site/sociolximpact/. You can even pre-order the book if you
like!
Thanks again for all your kind responses folks.
Dave
--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University (2009-2015)
[log in to unmask] | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
On 27/04/2015 17:08, Dave Sayers wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Does anyone out there know how or why the original UK Research Assessment Exercise
> came about in 1986? (I think it wasn't actually called that until the 1992
> iteration.) I recall hearing a delicious vignette at some training event or other,
> something along the lines of a government minister being tasked with assessing the
> usefulness of university research, and turning to an Oxford don friend of his, and
> both of them coming up with the idea as a very tentative way to gauge research
> strengths - then the idea (predictably enough) gradually snowballed from there over
> the years. But sadly I can't think of a way to cite a vague memory of a training
> event using the Harvard system, so if anyone has anything more specific I'd very much
> appreciate it.
>
> Thanks,
> Dave
>
> --
> Dr. Dave Sayers
> Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University
> Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University (2009-2015)
> [log in to unmask] | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
|
