The Research Assessment Exercise, 1996

Which is the best University? This is a silly question, but for the past year our universities have been doing their best to find the answer in the second Research Assessment Exercise 1996 (The first was in 1992). Every department had to decide how many of its staff were ‘Research Active’ and then put in four pieces of Research from each member, accompanied by miles of red tape. A panel, chaired in the case of Archaeology by Professor Barry Cunliffe in Oxford, then met and the results were as follows (the 1992 rating is in brackets, followed by the number of research active staff):

5* : Cambridge (5,25), Oxford (5,27), Sheffield (5,20)

5 : Bradford (3,18), Belfast (4,10), Durham (5,21), Leicester (3,16), Reading (5,16), Southampton (5,21), University College London (5,48)

4: Birmingham (3,19), Bristol(-,7), Cardiff (3,12), Edinburgh (4, 10), Glasgow (3,13), Liverpool (3,15), York (3,9)

3a: Exeter (3,5), Lampeter 3,12), Nottingham (2,9)

3b: Bournemouth (2,16), Carmarthen (-, 2), Newcastle upon Tyne (3,11), Newport -, 4)

2: King Alfred’s College Winchester (-, 4), Staffordshire (2,2)

Archaeology clearly did very well, with three 5 starred universities and a great number of 5s, indeed in the THES list it was the ranked fifth among all subjects, just behind classics, but ahead of anthropology and history). Leicester and Bradford in particular will no doubt be feeling very pleased with themselves in going up two places. There were some surprises too at the bottom end of the list, notably from Bournemouth which only got a 3b. Yet Bournemouth has been the most rapidly expanding university of all with one of the largest if not THE largest undergraduate departments in Archaeology. Not only this but Bournemouth has also been extremely successful in winning outside contracts, notably the prestigious MARS (Monuments at Risk Survey) from English Heritage, worth £1 million over 4 years. However, massive research contracts like this do not apparently count for much in the academic world, and Tim Darvill is very disappointed with his 3b. Similarly King Alfred’s College Winchester which has its degrees validated by Southampton has been building up a strong reputation for its undergraduate teaching - see the Shapwick article inCurrent Archaeology 151. But again they did not enter Shapwick as a piece of research as it was self-published and not ‘international’ enough. Pioneering projects such as this do not fit into the appropriate category.

Those using the list to choose a University at undergraduate level should remember two things. Yes, the list is important because good scores are likely to mean more money from the Government - though this may well be outweighted by the income from non-governmental contract research. One should remember too that this is a research assessment and it is quite possible to argue that teaching and research are two very different talents and that some of the best teaching universities e.g. Bournemouth and Winchester may be at the bottom of the list. To the contrarian, it is not wholly illogical to argue that from the teaching point of view, the list should be read from bottom to top. (Full details of all subjects can be found on the web at: http://back.niss.ac.uk/education/hefc/rae96/1_96/t58.html

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