Objections to UK funding proposal

Britain's Royal Society told the government on Thursday (August 17) that it needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with better proposals for reforming a system that allocates money to universities for scientific research.

The current Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) uses panels of experts to assess the quality of each university department's research and allocate funds from the UK's four higher education funding bodies. But it is widely viewed as a burdensome and costly system.

In its place, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has proposed using simpler models that rely on quantitative measures, such as the level of outside funding a department gets, to distribute funds.

The Royal Society objects to the proposal. "We think peer review is an essential part of whatever replaces the RAE," Royal Society Spokesman Bob Ward told The Scientist. "You shouldn't just rely on a mechanistic formula for distributing funds."

In a letter to DfES, Royal Society President Martin Rees wrote that the proposed income-based metric models are not appropriate. "We feel that there is merit in exploring ways forward that are not covered by the options presented in the consultation," he said.

Quantitative data could be used to underpin the work of peer review panels, "but we do not believe that it is sensible to dispense with the panels," he said. "Research income is not a robust proxy measure of quality."

Another problem with the government's proposals, according to the Royal Society, is that they weaken Britain's current "dual support" system of funding university research, in which there is one funding stream for research proposals and another for indirect research costs and infrastructure.

"Dual support is a valuable system that rewards excellence and nurtures promise," Rees said in his letter. "If decisions about the quality related component of the Higher Education Funding Councils' block grant were made solely on the basis of decisions already made by Research Councils and other funding agencies ... some of the value of dual support would be lost."

The umbrella group Universities UK has similar concerns. "Metrics will, of course, have a role to play," a spokesman told The Scientist in an Email. "We do, however, have concern over the use of research grant and contract income as a metric on its own and look forward to working with the government to establish a more robust system that can command the confidence of the research community."

Peter Cotgreave, director of the lobby group Campaign for Science and Engineering, also agreed that better alternatives are needed -- including a more fundamental overhaul.

"My take is that ... we need to do away with the RAE; it's got to go," he told The Scientist. "But we need to ask what this money is really for. One of the things it should be for is investing in really new ideas, young people, and people switching fields. The question is how will we achieve that?"

There is widespread confusion about what the RAE money is supposed to be for, Cotgreave said. "And until you say clearly what it is for, you will never be able to design a system for distributing it."

The government consultation on the RAE will continue until October.

Stephen Pincock
spincock@the-scientist.com

Links within this article:

DFES: Reform of higher education research assessment and funding
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/

Research Assessment Exercise 2008
http://www.rae.ac.uk/

H. Gavaghan, "Mixed reaction to RAE proposals," The Scientist, June 6, 2003.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/21370/

S. Pincock, "UK plans research funding overhaul," The Scientist, June 20, 2006.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23683/

Peter Cotgreave
http://www.savebritishscience.org.uk/about/who/staff.htm