Publish and be crammed

Hugh Willmott believes that under the guise of improving efficiency the research assessment exercise has produced a Kafkaesque nonsense of product degradation.

"Well, I've already got my four (publications) in the bag . . . " Recently, I have heard such crowing - ironic more often than smug - about personal publication performance. It is symptomatic of the contradictory influence of the research assessment exercise.

Even those who have fulfilled their output quota for the millennium can be deeply sceptical about its value. The "four in the bag" attitude pokes fun at the notion that academic feet, if not fingers, might be put up for a few years.

The RAE has subjected academics to managerial disciplines of competition and evaluation. Marvel at the massive improvements in publication productivity. Wonder at the efficiency gains. Celebrate the relentless increase in research applications, not to mention students with upper second degrees. All achieved by applying the disciplines of management - competitive bench marking and quality assurance - to modernise academia. "Out" with professionalism! "In" with . . . er . . . the bureaucracy of performance management.

It is easy to be cynical and dismissive about a system which, as Laurie Taylor reminds us, is bedevilled by contradictions and absurdities. When a system operates to bring accountability into disrepute, it is all too easy to forget that it is not unreasonable to plan and account for the large chunks of public money invested in higher education.

Unhappily, though, the translation of this unexceptional principle into coherent and consistent practices of managing research strategy and funding has been far from smooth.

The battery hens of academia are producing ever higher yields. But, perversely, this activity is often directed at raising rates of research throughput rather than enhancing its quality. Pressures to clock up results have hardly been tempered by the simultaneous, and doubtless "entirely coincidental", intensification and rationalisation (eg modularisation) of academic work. Higher education has been a soft target for warehousing unemployed youth and subsidising high-earnings tax cuts.

Institutions and academics now find themselves competing ever more intensively and destructively for staff, students and research awards. Like football managers, vice chancellors, deans and department heads find themselves under pressure to deliver a quick fix. "Big name" players are signed up or retained - often by "protecting" them from teaching and administrative duties or by providing substantial research support. Such moves drain the pool of resources available for supporting other staff. Casualisation and insecurity result as the link between research and teaching is fractured. A deeper binary divide is (re)created. Yet, it is far from certain that chequebook teams will turn in good performances or even retain the star players.

There is a fear of the high standards set by starred 5 achievers. There is also loathing of poorly performing departments which, by depressing the institution's position in the league tables, can adversely affect the capacity to compete for students, commercial sponsorship and research funding. To reduce the risks of failure, top-down pressures are exerted to induce and monitor individual and departmental progress. Publications and research grants become the currency of promotions and discretionary increments. Senior staff are too busy defending and promoting their own institutions to challenge the collective neurosis of the RAE - a challenge which, in any event, could easily be represented as wimpishness or special pleading.

The RAE espouses forward planning but operates to place a premium on the short-term. Staff are urged to plan their work so that it can be published before the cut-off date. Research applications are prepared to satisfy the internal monitoring of bids. Low-risk, conservative research ventures, which will be completed punctually and published in established journals, are inadvertently encouraged. What goes unmeasured (eg informal contacts with students and colleagues) becomes marginalised where it is not erased.

Faced with an intensely competitive market, there is relentless pressure to cut corners and sell short measure. The product is degraded but the customers are assured that they are getting better value than ever. To square this circle, additional resources are diverted from research production to advertising and promotion. Sounds familiar? Rushed publications, skimpy refereeing procedures, lack of time for reflection, less time to consult with colleagues and students, overflowing lecture halls - all are indicators of product degradation.

This is privately admitted but is invisible to RAE monitoring. The unspoken hope of the RAE is to secure elite research goods at mass education prices. In practice, the RAE is less effective as a means of improving research focus and quality than as a method of dividing, degrading and sweating the work of academics. The RAE concentrates upon expected gains and benefits engineered by its application. It is myopic about losses and costs. Institutions and departments are prompted to conceal their weaknesses as they generate up-beat accounts of their achievements. Mesmerised by the promise of removing slack and inefficiency, the RAE is blind or indifferent to the deleterious consequences of commodifying academia by applying quasi-market mechanisms of resource allocation. For its academic converts, the RAE bureaucracy of quality offers career opportunities to be relished. For all those subjected to its pressures - academics and support staff directly, students indirectly - it has been a Kafkaesque trial to be endured.

The RAE induces all kinds of behaviour that, even on its own terms, is at once "impossible" and indefensible. Like Soviet five-year planning, its basic design and thrust rolls on, seemingly oblivious to its perverse consequences.

Or has managerialism grown cynical? Perhaps we are now too punch drunk to notice or to care? Building on the pioneering research into the RAE by Ian McNay (THES, August 30), it is surely time for a fundamental review. Instead of seeking further fine-tuning of its mechanisms, this review should evaluate the wide-ranging effects of the RAE, including its role in stimulating innovation and diversity of knowledge which, politicians and futurologists tell us, is the most precious resource of a post-industrial society.

Hugh Willmott is professorof organisational analysis at the Manchester School of Management, UMIST.