Research Assessment Exercise Results and Research Funding in the United Kingdom: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

A considerable sum of money is allocated to UK universities on the basis of Research Assessment Exercise performance. In this paper we analyse the two main funding models used in the United Kingdom and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. We suggest that the benchmarking used by the two main models have significant weaknesses, and propose an alternative benchmark. It is shown that the different models have quite different implications for the focus of UK research.

Key Words:

• Education
• research funding
• funding councils

Notes

The data utilized in this analysis were provided in electronic form as part of SHEFC (2002).

1. These funding councils are the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department of Employment and Learning for Northern Ireland (DELNI).

2. Places in UK universities for UK/European Union undergraduate students are fixed by the funding decisions taken by the Funding Councils, and so universities are in effect playing a zero sum game with each other where the return to research reputation is seen only in the quality of students attracted, not the quantity of students attracted; however, for non‐European Union students no such arbitrary restrictions apply, and therefore the attraction of such students is one way for universities to increase their total income.

3. The RAE is owned and controlled by the four funding councils.

4. Thus, for instance, the SHEFC decided to remove all research funding from the pre‐1992 departments scoring 3a or less in the 2001 RAE, although the HEFCE decided that a large reduction (that still left some research funding for such departments) was a sufficient penalty.

5. To quote the White Paper (HM Government, 2003, p. 23), “We propose to encourage the formation of consortia, provide extra funding for research in larger, better managed research units, and develop criteria to judge the strength of collaborative work. As part of this process, we will invest even more in our very best research institutions, enabling them to compete effectively with the world’s best universities”.

6. These models are prototypes, not exact replicas of the HEFCE and SHEFCE models. They differ from the actual models in that the data we use for the research volume indicators are not exactly those used by the two Funding Councils. The difference arises because we do not use the minor volume indicators.

7. However, omitting from the analysis those universities submitting to only one subject area panel, and those subject area panels receiving submissions from only English universities (a problem in the fourth section of the paper), we arrive at a subset of 145 institutions and 65 subject areas.

8. SHEFC’s justification for this discrimination is its desire to encourage the development of research excellence in the newer institutions that were, until quite recently, almost exclusively concerned with teaching. Whether the concession to the newer institutions is retained may well depend on whether the Government’s desire (set out in the White Paper) to see concentration of research in fewer but larger research centres becomes accepted policy throughout the United Kingdom.

9. For comparative purposes we use the HEFCE values of G(…) and C_j on the grounds that the HEFCE is by far the largest provider of research funds in the United Kingdom and its G(…) function is simpler. As shown in Table 2, there is almost no difference between the cost factors used by the two Councils.

10. One might argue that these three subject areas stand out so prominently only because they are large subject areas as defined by the size of their aggregate payouts (under the HEFCE method, the payout to the English Universities for each of these three subject areas is between £28 million and £35 million); however, the final column of Appendix Table A2 reveals that even in percentage terms they are prominent, with losses of 36% (Art & Design), 24% (Education) and 14% (Business and Management Studies) when moving to the SHEFC method.

11. Using the SHEFC method as the default for assessing the reallocations arising from a move to the international method would result in transfers of £108.9 million for the English Universities and £14 million for the RUK Universities.