RESEARCH EXCELLENCE FRAMEWORK 2008-2012 CONSULTATION (UK)

Dear Colleague,

As you may be aware, the Higher Education Funding Councils for England and Wales (HEFCE and HEFCW), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and the Department for Education and Learning Northern Ireland (DELNI) are undertaking a second round of consultation on the proposed arrangements for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2008-2012. (The full consultation document can be downloaded from http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_38/.)

The REF will be the key process by which the quality and impact of research in UK Higher Education (HE) institutions will be assessed. As was the case with its predecessor the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the results of the REF will have important implications for the distribution of funding in the sector.

The HSA’s Executive Committee asked me to coordinate a possible submission to the REF consultation on the behalf of the Association.

While we recognise that many academic Departments and Institutions will be preparing their own responses to this consultation, we believe that it is important that the HSA, as a Learned Society and with a role to play in representing its members’ interests, also makes a submission.

We are concerned that the views of the HSA membership are fully reflected in helping us to construct and frame our response. I have made a few personal notes regarding the REF (below), which may act as a springboard for further discussion.

Should you have any views on the position that the HSA should adopt in its submission to this consultation, or would like to make any representation on the matter of any kind, please do not hesitate to get in touch. I would be grateful if any responses could be in my possession by 20 November 2009 so that I can reflect on them in time for the consultation deadline in December.

Best wishes


Ed Ferrari, HSA treasurer
Email: e.t.ferrari@sheffield.ac.uk

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Note on the Research Excellence Framework 2008-12 consultation

One of the key issues for consultation revolves around the designation of the Units of Assessment (UoA) (consultation question 6). As part of a drastic reduction in the number of UoAs, there is a proposal that the Town & Country Planning unit is merged with Architecture and the Built Environment. This could potentially have ramifications for many (although not all) housing scholars.

In the 1996 Research Assessment Excerise (RAE), Planning-related departments were assessed alongside Built Environment colleagues. In the 2008 RAE, the existence of the 2008 Town and Country Planning panel emerged from dissatisfaction in 1996, because it was felt that many social science disciplines suffered from a lack of sufficient representation or enough detailed expertise at the UoA level. It would seem that in 1996 problems emerged because the academic interests and priorities of Built Environment departments often coalesced around technical and physical engineering interests, quite different to the range of social-scientific interests of many housing scholars. Built Environment colleagues were often involved in very large research projects and consortia, often aimed at solving very technical issues, which tended to emphasise inputs over outputs in a way that was quite different to the priorities of housing scholars. For example, there is a potential danger that the outputs and impacts (e.g. policy development) associated with Housing Studies (and planning) would be marginalised in a UoA which combined planning with the built environment.

In the 2008 exercise, housing outputs comprised around 6% of all submissions. Housing scholars were also involved in producing outputs for a wide range of other 'sub-disciplines', including regeneration (16%) and real estate (10%). It seems appropriate that the composition of the UoA Panel should continue to reflect the importance of housing outputs. A broader UoA encompassing architecture and the built environment could possibly work counter to this imperative. In particular, having a similarly-sized panel with a broader remit would likely mean that specialist housing representation would be squeezed out.

Although it is recognised that having the debate on the definition and composition of UoAs is welcome and necessary, it would surely be of concern if scholars coming from a social-sciences tradition, like many housing and planning scholars, were assessed in a more technical environment.

There are other issues on which HEFCE and its counterparts are seeking views, but it is probably the issue of UoA designation that is of the greatest significance to the HSA as a research community. It would seem sensible that any HSA response should focus on this issue.

Ed Ferrari
October 2009