Timeline for answer to What universities have laid off tenured math faculty for financial reasons? by David Roberts
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| Jan 4, 2014 at 16:21 | comment | added | Martin Hairer | A third maths department that closed as a consequence of a not-so-stellar result at the RAE was Nottingham Trent University. The department was very small, so damage was fortunately limited. I know of one person who was actually out of a job for a few months, the other research active members of NTU had just enough time to find other jobs before they would have been forced out. | |
| May 2, 2011 at 17:16 | comment | added | Tim Porter | @Jose you ask: where is the evidence that the RAE "has since been seen to be quite flawed". The Roberts report by Sir Gareth Roberts was highly critical of the methodology and suggested some improvements. These seem not to have been accepted by the main research universities and I suspect that is because of their own self-interest. No system is perfect and the old RAE did feed more money into maths. In the process I lost my position ...., but that is not what this comment is about. Probably universities used the RAE as an excuse to settle internal battles. We lost. | |
| Apr 29, 2011 at 7:25 | history | edited | Tim Porter | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 29, 2011 at 4:17 | history | edited | David Roberts♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 29, 2011 at 4:16 | comment | added | David Roberts♦ | @Jose, hmm, ok. I'll edit the answer to be a little less unsubstantiatable :) | |
| Apr 29, 2011 at 2:42 | comment | added | José Figueroa-O'Farrill | David: Yes, I'm painfully aware that the methodology has changed (although probably not so much in maths). The only "flaw" that the change in methodology addresses is the fact that the RAE was extremely labour intensive for the reviewers. The new framework (REF = Research Excellence Framework) makes heavy use of bibliometrics; although maths seems to have been treated differently than other exact sciences and will retain a system closer to the RAE. | |
| Apr 29, 2011 at 2:39 | comment | added | José Figueroa-O'Farrill | algori: I'm sorry, but it does not follow that the system is flawed. The ultimate decision what to do after the RAE is the university's. Faced with a unit of assessment (UoA) which obtains a "low" score (and low just means not the highest possible score) the decision can be made to axe the UoA or, on the contrary, to invest in it. I'm sure that in Hull and Bangor, not every UoA with the same score as the Pure Maths UoA was closed. Hence you have to look elsewhere for the real cause of the closures. | |
| Apr 29, 2011 at 2:35 | comment | added | David Roberts♦ | No relation, by the way, to the author of the so-called 'Roberts report' :) | |
| Apr 29, 2011 at 2:33 | comment | added | David Roberts♦ | @Jose - as far as I know, the methodology for said exercise in the UK has been completely changed and called something else. I doubt if the government (or relevant department thereof) would come out and say 'it was rubbish', but such actions show that at the very least something 'better' has come along. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Assessment_Exercise#Criticism | |
| Apr 29, 2011 at 2:21 | comment | added | algori | Jose -- well, if one of the outcomes was laying off Ronnie Brown and Tim Porter, the results speak for themselves, don't they? | |
| Apr 29, 2011 at 0:03 | comment | added | José Figueroa-O'Farrill | Another victim of the same research assessment exercise was the maths department at Hull University. By the way, not that I'm disagreeing, but where is the evidence that the RAE "has since been seen to be quite flawed"? | |
| Apr 28, 2011 at 23:51 | history | answered | David Roberts♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |