And the British Academy @britishacademy.bsky.social has done an amazing piece of mapping for SHAPE subjects here. 7/ www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...

Side-lining learned societies & subject associations from these discussions is a missed opportunity. They have & will provide many of the REF expert assessors: they have a wealth of knowledge & work at the coalface. See also Main Panel and SP reports. Attention to data would be a fine thing. 3/3

So what are the sticks going to be to ‘drive’ this particular unwelcome change? (3/2)

But just as no HEI was willing to say ‘yeah, our degrees are probably only worth £2k pa’, do they really expect many to say, ’Actually, we’re not that good at this research malarkey’? All previous REFs show that there’s excellent research across the sector, esp in Arts and Humanities disciplines.

I wonder just how interventionist the government is intending to be in terms of ‘driving specialisation’. The hope is clearly that ‘the market’ will sort itself out into fast and slow lane research institutions, just as it was when fees were introduced… (1/2)