The insanity of RAE

“Those happy souls who live in the real world will not know that last Thursday saw the culmination of nonsense on stilts in the British university world — the release of the latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results. In a nutshell, RAE is the extension of ‘targets’ and bean-counting to the world of ideas, and it’s a crazy system. In one major academic department I know, the most creative and original member of the department was excluded from the RAE by his colleagues because his pathbreaking work ‘didn’t fit the narrative’ — i.e. the story being carefully crafted to impress the bean counters. The mainstream media know nothing of this, however …” (more)

[John Naughton, Memex 1.1, 21 December]

Advertisement