Are We Managing to Destroy Science?

The government in the UK was concerned about the efficiency of research institutions and set up a Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) to consider what was being done in each university. The article hich follows is a response to the imposition of the RAE. In the year ahead, the UK government is due to carry out the next Research Assessment Exercise (RAE ). The goal of this regular five-yearly check-up of the university sector is easy to understand: to increase productivity within public sector research. But striving for such productivity can lead to unfortunate consequences. In the case of the RAE, one risk attached to this is the creation of an overly controlling management culture that threatens the future of imaginative science. Academic institutions are already preparing for the RAE with some anxiety—understandably so, for the financial consequences of failure are severe. Departments with a current rating of four or five (research is rated on a five point scale, with five the highest) must maintain their score or face a considerable loss of funding. Meanwhile, those with ratings of two or three are fighting for their survival. The pressures are forcing research management onto the defensive. Common strategies for increasing academic output include grading individual researchers every year according to RAE criteria, pressurising them to publish anything regardless of quality, diverting funds from key and expensive laboratory science into areas of study such as management, and even threatening to close departments. Another strategy being readily adopted is to remove…