APPENDIX 3
Memorandum submitted by the University
of Northumbria
The Science and Technology Committee should
understand that the Research Assessment Exercise, although it
has for the most part produced better grades for all in 2001,
was never designed to support the research aspirations of modern
universities. MURG members have often observed that in the composition
of the panels there is a built in conservatism which supports
the status quo ante 1992. There is some evidence that panel
judgements in 2001 were norm referenced rather than criterion
referenced as per the guidelines. How can the adjudicators, drawn
predominantly from the beneficiary institutions, deny self-interest?
Although there have been significant gains with
some subjects in new universities, on the whole these are isolated
examples and the global picture remains one in which new universities
can expect 3-6 per cent research funding in the block grant, while
old universities get 30-60 per cent. Because new universities
were not given specific earmarked funding to support research
at the time of inception—the so called DevR was woefully
inadequate—they have been unable to build a research infrastructure
commensurate with their size and are consequently less successful
in grant application and external contract bidding. At a recent
MURG meeting this was graphically demonstrated when a colleague
from Glasgow University indicated that the central research section
of his university contained around 50 staff, when in most new
universities of an equivalent size, the support section contains
no more than 10.
Notwithstanding these obvious disadvantages,
the new universities have, with relatively small investment, produced
significant returns. The gearing ratio between block grant income
and grants and contracts at Northumbria currently stands at 1:2.5.
More important however is the acknowledgement of the fact that
new universities have legitimate research aspirations and that
they fully subscribe to the idea that research and teaching are
the primary functions of any university. They are strong in the
belief that the deliverers of new knowledge and understanding
should have a stake in their production. What we have seen in
the run up to the publication of the Research Assessment Exercise
results is nothing short of an abrogation of this fundamental
principle, in the claim by ministers and by the Funding Council
that the ultimate objective of the RAE should be to support "world
class research". World class research, if it is truly world
class has many more opportunities available to it to secure funding.
Currently however the term is used as a covert code for the maintenance
of the present regime in which the bulk of research funding goes
to a small group of elite universities. Sir Howard Newby has indicted
that only world class research should be funded. This demonstrates
a culpable lack of responsibility to the needs of the whole sector.
Its effect is to uncouple teaching from research in most universities
and to stifle the aspirations of new universities—consigning
them to a subordinate teaching only function. This view of the
world needs to be vigorously contested if research in Britain
is to continue to be innovative, iconoclastic and visionary.
The Science and Technology Committee is concerned
about whether the results of the recent RAE show a real improvement
in research performance and whether we need to consider alternative
strategies for allocating research funding. If we believe in teaching
and research as the primary function of any university, then clearly
we have to decide upon a basic level of funding for both of these
activities within the block grant. No one objects to appropriate
quality assessment or to assessment exercises. The reward for
good performance in the delivery of particular subjects, whether
in teaching or research (and presently good teaching that goes
unrewarded), should occupy a smaller, incentive-related component
within a university's recurrent grant. This would get us beyond
the present impasse in which the funding council effectively says
"show us excellent research and we will fund it" and
the universities say "give us the resource and we will produce
excellent research". The present confusion which Sir Howard
Newby has initiated in the columns of the Higher and in the minds
of unthinking ministers, effectively sets aside the assessment
of subject performance in teaching and research in favour of "mission
diversity", another heavily encrypted term which in the present
debate redraws the binary line between the world class research
university versus access/lifelong learning/teaching only university.
We need to have a clear and unequivocal statement
that good research and teaching are the obligation of any university
and then design a funding methodology to support this view.
Kenneth McConkey
Professor of Art History
Dean of Arts, with special responsibility for research
9 January 2002
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