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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