‘Naive’ TEF metrics could undermine widening participation, v-c warns

There is a need to consider who the representatives of universities should be when communicating with the House of Commons... but good that Professor Gaskell has 'learned' from his tenure at Queen Mary. To quote his contribution in 2012 in these same pages entitled "From here to prosperity", written in response to academics who complained about his use of "naive" and "imprecise" metrics used for the evaluation of academics working in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences: "Our recent restructuring programme has been driven by differing combinations of academic and financial considerations. We appreciate that these changes have been difficult for colleagues. Where academic performance has been assessed, it has been important to do so on the basis of objective criteria including metrics - any subjective assessment would be quite unacceptable. These objective criteria were based on generally recognised academic expectations and set at levels that reflect the imprecision of any such measures."

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