The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) - that paragon of flawed judgement, that epitome of legitimised bias, that nonpareil of measuring the unmensurable - has released local results to the university, and the university have released them to us. We weren't expecting to hear until tomorrow morning so it came as an anxious surprise; a little like opening a birthday present from a 3-year-old that is as likely as not to contain a carefully-wrapped slug.
We're also under a press embargo until midnight, in case we feel like running off to our chums at the Guardian or, perchance, writing about it on a blog.
So, the big news is that my department didn't do so well. Not the worst in the university, but certainly in the bottom cluster, depending on how you collapse a 4-point profile into a single value. True, we only have the university ratings and hence can't be sure how our psychology department compares against others in the UK, but I'll be very surprised if we emerge in the upper echelons. Probably mid-table, since doing poorly in a research-intensive university means doing quite well on a national scale.
But still. The hammer is going to fall and I'm not sure I want to be standing there with upturned smile when it strikes. RAE results determine the direct funding university departments receive from government pockets and bad results mean bad times ahead.
I'm building a list of psychology departments that I think have probably done better than we have (on a very unscientific basis of knowing some individuals and/or research programmes in said departments). I'll see tomorrow how well my openly biased and underinformed judgement correlates with the nominally objective and complete assessment of the RAE.
2 comments:
A familiar story! Sadly, there are SO many ways of reading the metrics that the powers that be can enjoy spinning them - my Uni went up in one table, and down in another, and is about 20 ranks lower in one table than the other... so as you can imagine the email to staff was a little...interesting.
We won't know about the money until the summer. Just hope the job market opens up a little - I think I'm ready for a move, regardless of the amount of crap about to come down on us from on high for not doing better (by my reading of the data, my department did about as well as last time but others improved a lot).
As it turned out, my department also probably did about as well as last time. Roughly the same rank in the national table of psychology departments and maybe a few places up, depending on spin.
Assuming the job market does open up in summer, I'm guessing the rush of applications will be unprecedented!
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