Scrap REF and allocate QR funding by headcount, says professor

I haven't worked in the UK system for a while, but isn't it the case that the current headcount of 'research active staff' has been shaped by years of RAE/REF assessment, funding and local strategising? Also, the current distribution isn't the same as we saw when RAE was in its early rounds, particularly if one drills down to subject levels. It took some of the large metro universities a while to climb the ranks & some newish unis did surprisingly well in the first round(s) (e.g. Lancaster, where we had no inkling that we were good at research). I'm all for reducing inefficiencies and perverse incentives; less sure about making permanent the current distribution of advantage and disadvantage.

Oxbridge prof punts idea to bake in research funding to elite universities shocker.

It is a very simple piece of analysis to plot REF ranking against number of researchers, and thus see there is a very strong correlation, with a couple of outliers which give a far better indication of the relative strength of an institution rather than its ranking place. The lesson to Universities wanting to rise up the rankings is simple, stop building new buildings and hire more researchers!

This is QR-funding, not all research funding. So this proposal would achieve something akin to the current distribution of QR-funds, whilst freeing up more time for actual research and reducing bureaucracy, yet also allowing change (if institutions hire more researchers) and doing nothing to impede the winning of grants from funding bodies via processes that include peer review. Seems fair and sensible to me.

Good idea. I certainly agree that the REF has done real harm to the standards of research. The only problem that I see is who decides who is "research-active"? It's predictable that, if QR funding were distributed on the basis of the number of research-active people, we'd find that a lot of research-active people would suddenly materialise. Never underestimate the dishonesty of large organisations,

Just to say that the lecture with audio will be posted online soon, but meanwhile, the slides are here: https://www.slideshare.net/deevybishop/what-are-metrics-good-for-reflections-on-ref-and-tef Includes a plot of the association between N staff entered and final power score.