Labour, do us a favour — scrap the REF
Over the past decade or two, British universities have morphed from educative environments to one stop shops encompassing everything from backfilling mental health provision to employability hubs aiming to produce ever more qualified graduates with ever dwindling resource. Not all of that new practice has been negative, far from it. But it is clear that universities are expected to do significantly more than they were, creating numerous challenges, and leaving many hovering on the brink of financial collapse — with all the damage to local economies this would bring. Higher education remains an area— to borrow new Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Mais lecture diagnosis of the British economy — ‘inadequately prepared for shocks, [with] its public services overstretched.’ Sorting out the sector’s finances has been highlighted by Bridget Phillipson as a ‘day one priority.’
One answer to this would be more cash from central government. But we know that in financially straitened times universities are unlikely to be high up the list for new spend. The NHS, schools, climate change, transport and other areas will have a strong claim for the proceeds of any future growth, and rightly so.
So, given the political difficulties of either raising domestic fees (a direction they may end up going in) or encouraging more international students to square the funding circle, what’s the way out? In other areas — Wes Streeting on health for example — Labour have spoken in terms of reform. I don’t think this can be the whole story, but it remains true that Labour should be looking to scrap wasteful practice, and deliver on every pound of taxpayer investment (perhaps half of English higher education remaining ultimately borne by the taxpayer).
Universities are often cash poor — particularly those newer institutions stiffed by the unregulated free for all enshrined by George Osborne’s removal of the student numbers cap in 2015/16 — but the sector is paradoxically an area where meaningful efficiencies can be delivered. The centre can adopt seemingly minor, procedural tweaks that would make a real difference.
Let’s take an example — a little niche, but stick with me. Every seven years or so, universities have their research output audited for quality control purposes. At first glance, given this process leads to the allocation of £2bn of public money, this makes sense. The issue is that the mechanism that does this — the Research Excellence Framework (REF) — is expensive, gameable, and leads universities down rabbit-holes of extensive bureaucracy. These effects far outweigh any benefits. It generally forms a textbook example of the type of ‘feverish competition’ whilst simultaneously not being ‘left alone’ ethos that marks much of the university system in the 2020s, as Will Davies highlighted this week.
It also ain’t cheap. The estimate commissioned by the REF itself puts the cost of running this process at around £470m across a seven year cycle, or £67m a year. Certainly, a decent chunk of this is indirect spend which wouldn’t all disappear without a REF, but you could get tens of millions of upfront annual savings by scraping the unwieldy thing. For context, the OBR — the body responsible for calculating the effect of tweaks to the entire British economy at a seemingly ever increasing number of fiscal events lately — runs on a £5m annual budget. Whilst I personally quite like my research about Tony Blair or Charlie Chaplin, even I’d concede it’s probably not quite as vital.
To get into the weeds a little, one of the wasteful aspects of the REF is that it replicates existing practice. Indeed, regardless of the REF, people assess research quality all the time. Before articles and books appear in print they are read by experts in those fields, who provide a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ as to whether they are of sufficient quality to be published. After they are released these outputs are then chewed over in the academic sphere by scholars (and reviewed in specialist journals in the case of books), whilst the general public often gets a taste through media appearances and the like. Social media has of course increased engagement with academic material significantly.
The REF’s role is largely therefore to build a pointless game that mimics existing forms of peer review — with the added caveat that the REF assessor determining whether something scores a much feared 1* or a beloved 4* likely knows less about it than the scholars who approved it for publication in the first place. Perhaps by consequence, almost 85% of publications submitted to the 2021 REF got funding generating scores of either 3* or 4*. Equally, given that staff taking part in the REF only need to submit their best one or two publications (and next time, not even that) the process is eminently manipulatable, and universities waste millions of pounds and hours chasing a de facto score draw. At a time when many institutions are struggling to stay afloat, it has a particular note of unreality. It serves as less of a nudge, and more of a shove. Researchers like to research. There also are no academic jobs these days. The simple supply and demand of the market is already taking care of much of the quality assurance the REF claims to be policing.
The unintended consequences of the REF are legion. It produces endless debates about the best strategy to try and predict a set of rules that even its organisers don’t fully know yet, and will probably only shift each institution’s payout a fraction of a percent here or there. It leads to dozens upon dozens of staff being dragooned into away days to discuss these opaque issues — boosting the profits of hotel chains and conference centres whilst draining frontline energies. It sees people seconded out of important teaching to manage REF best practice, whatever that is, and consultants brought in to soothsay on such matters. At no stage are most people — well, me at least — going to change even a comma in article because some consultant says “in 2021 it was all about research exemplars, now we’re working towards research excellence.” They’re just not. People write what they write based on their expertise. But here large chunks of British academia are — endlessly turning this stuff over and over. And, at the end of it all, two-thirds of British universities get under £10m a year each from the process — no doubt useful, but also a figure undermined by spending on the above fluff.
Whilst all this maybe a bit tedious for staff, the key point is that students suffer, significantly. REF process and paperwork eat up time that could be used to mould the skills needed for tomorrow’s productive economy, and signpost students to the help they need. It distracts and demoralises. The opportunity costs are huge. None of the above is particularly the fault of the individual actors or decision makers at institutional levels — they are rationally playing the game as it is currently laid out. Decent people including managers are trying to make it work. The game is just laid out really badly.
So, Labour, please: pocket an easy win. As part of a general review to identify waste in higher education, perhaps under the aegis of the Office for Value for Money, pledge to scrap the overly bureaucratic REF, and replace it with something far leaner.
Critics would say the centre will require some form of quality assurance for taxpayer’s investment. Given the ‘often wasteful’ nature of public spending per se I wouldn’t over-egg that need politically. Nonetheless, imposing a model where, say, £5m a year was given to every bona fide university and the remaining REF cash determined by a formula building in staff levels, publication citations, book sales, media references as a proxy for ‘impact’, and one or two other boilerplate criteria you could hash out in a three month consultation would be a net benefit timewise.
All this would save a bit of cash, and and free up the university frontline to help achieve productivity gains and broader economic growth. Managers could be repurpose their skillsets into overseeing far more productive areas — including, let’s say, universities’ evolving contribution to the skills agenda. Everyone wins.
It sounds techy. Hell, it is. But it would also do some good. The only downside would be I won’t be able to pocket this blog as REF Impact.
As ever, all views are my own. Although UCU also share this one.
