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School Gate blog: should the RAE assessments matter to prospective students?

A media studies department at a former polytechnic is among the top-rated academic centres in Britain in the latest official rankings of the quality of university research.

Sixty per cent of the research published by the school of Media Arts and Design at Westminster University (formerly the Polytechnic of Central London) was rated as “world-leading” by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

This measures the calibre of academic research and influences the destination of £1.5billion a year of research funding. It is arguably the most important force in British academia.

Only the museum studies department at Leicester University scored higher, with 65 per cent of its research rated as world class.

For performance across all departments, the University of Cambridge cements its place as Britain's foremost centre for research, in the first RAE results published in seven years. Seven in ten (71 per cent) of its academics whose research was examined by panels of experts were in departments rated as “world leading” or “internationally excellent”.

Oxford achieved the same number, but was pipped by Cambridge's grade-point average, which takes in all levels of performance. The London School of Economics takes third place.

The rankings have been drawn up by The Times, using official RAE data, to produce an average score for the academics entered by each university. Imperial College, London, is fourth.

The new rankings affect funding up to and including 2013. They are the result of deliberations of 1,100 experts drawn from academia and industry, sitting on 67 specialist panels, assessing the quality of 200,000 pieces of work submitted by 159 research institutions published between 2001 and 2007.

Work is graded from 4* (world leading) down to 1* (nationally recognised) and 0 (not good enough to be recognised nationally).

Today's results show that more than half (54 per cent) of the research conducted by 52,400 staff is of world-class quality and is in the top two grades.

Seventeen per cent of the research submitted received the top rating of world leading, with 37 per cent being internationally recognised.

The grades showed striking differences between different subjects. In physics, for example, no university was judged to have more than 25 per cent of world-leading research, while some departments in other subjects registered more than 50 per cent at this level.

David Eastwood, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, which conducts the assessments, said the results confirmed that Britain was among the top rank of research nations. Although the grades used this time are not directly comparable with the system used in 2001, Professor Eastwood said that there had been an increase in the overall quality of research, with more departments getting top-level scores.

This could lead to difficulties when research funding is allocated next spring if the money available is spread more thinly across more departments than previously. John Denham, the Universities Secretary, has made it clear that he wants to concentrate research funding in a small number of centres of excellence.

Wendy Piat, director-general of the Russell Group of 20 research-intensive universities, said it was important that limited government funds were concentrated on fostering excellence.

“Our leading universities are facing increasingly difficult challenges with income streams under threat, costs increasing and international competition escalating. Now, more than ever, our research-led institutions have a crucial role to play in helping the UK to survive the economic downturn and stimulate a recovery,” she said.

But Steve Smith, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter and chairman of the 1994 Group of smaller research universities, said it was essential that funding was “directed towards excellence wherever it is found, and not just to those institutions with the greatest capacity”.

One of the most valuable results of the RAE is that it uncovers pockets of excellence in all types of university. The London School of Economics, predictably, tops the Times league table for performance in economics. But there are plenty of surprises.

The University of Oxford does not make it into the top ten for physics, coming joint 15th with Liverpool and Bristol. Imperial, a renowned centre for science, tops the history table for its work on the history of science.

The University of Portsmouth (a former poly) comes fifth for applied maths. In English, De Montfort University (formerly Leicester Polytechnic) comes joint tenth with Cambridge and only slightly lower than Oxford.

Vivian Lowndes, De Montfort's Pro-Vice-Chancellor for research, said that the department had built up a reputation for studying how text moves from print to screen in television or film adaptations of classic novels, and for its serious study of “chick-lit” novels, such as the Bridget Jones books.

For a full list, including specialist institutions, go to www.rae.ac.uk

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