What Is The RAE?
Simple answer: the Research Assessment Exercise. The more complex answer is, well, more complex. Basically the RAE is a way of measuring the quality of research in various universities and other higher education departments across the UK. It’s so significant because it is so well respected across the four standards boards who deal with this kind of thing, all of which have long, acronymic names – the HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW and the DELNI. Sound important, don’t they? That’s because they are – the ratings they give universities, particularly the RAE, is a measure of how much funding the universities are entitled to and the respect they’re due from other universities and bodies. It is, simply, a pretty big deal.
The Rating System
The RAE is a complicated system, and the way each subject is rated is dependent on the different boards of independent adjudicators – they decide exactly how to rate each subject. However, the general system of research assessment is always more or less the same – they look at all of the papers that come out of a given university and assess how good the research is – how significant it is to the field and how important an impact it makes on that field.
There are five main categories for scaling a university’s research output: world leading, internationally excellent, internationally recognised, nationally recognised, and below the standard. These are represented by numbers from 4*-1*, and below-standard universities (the poor things) are known as “unclassified”. Ouch.
The assessors are a panel of independent, specialist experts in the field they’re examining, so in many ways the RAE is a government-backed peer review system; very similar to the one already in place to examine every paper that is published. The only difference is that whilst a “normal” peer review system examines a single paper, the RAE will examine an entire university. Scary stuff.
Why Is It So Important?
The RAE is a pretty strong standard to base the quality of a university on – the quality of research undertaken is one of the most important indicators on whether or not a university is “good”, and more importantly the RAE will have a direct affect on all of the other university ranking tables and will be the first thing that’s looked at when a certain department requests a government or international grant. So, it’s pretty important. We suggest you go onto the 2008 website and have a look around at the universities and courses you’re interested in – it makes excellent reading.
There is one problem with the RAE that you should be aware of, of course – the assessment only looks at the papers of full time staff on the university’s payroll. This means it ignores the work of many full-time researchers working in a university because they are not directly employed by the university. This, obviously, has lead to a lot of criticism as many papers are explicitly ignored by the examining bodies and so a lot of what could be great work goes unnoticed. However, there are plans to change this in the next assessment exercise.
Finally
The RAE is an immensely important way of looking at universities, and despite not being a perfect system is very highly respected by the people who matter. Make sure you have a look at it when you get a chance, particularly if you’re thinking of starting a course somewhere – it’s a good way of telling if you’re onto a winner.
It doesn’t stop here though, coming this year is the RAE’s replacement system, the Research Excellence Framework. The REF is due to be completed in 2014 so be sure to head back to Coursefindr for your REF primer.