The quantitative analysis of the Research Excellence Framework effectiveness in evaluating the British universities’ third mission

Bijak, Katarzyna and Degl'innocenti, Marta (2016) The quantitative analysis of the Research Excellence Framework effectiveness in evaluating the British universities’ third mission. European Conference on Operational Research, Poznan (Poland), Poznan, Poland. 03 - 06 Jul 2016.

Abstract

Since 1986 the performance of the UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), including all British universities, has been evaluated using the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) or the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the latter since 2014. Such evaluations are the foundation of performance-based research funding systems, and this has been the case in the UK. This research focuses on the effectiveness of REF 2014 in evaluating the HEIs’ third mission, i.e. the level of knowledge and technology transfer. We build two models that share the same inputs, but have different outputs. The inputs include variables that represent key information on the HEI, such as the numbers of academic staff and students. The output of the first model is based on the REF scores of the HEI as assigned by the REF expert panels. The output of the second model is based on a number of variables that describe the level of engagement of the HEI’s staff in the third mission activities. Subsequently, we compare the performance of the two models to analyse how effectively the REF evaluates the level of knowledge and technology transfer. The data used in this research comes from the Higher Education Information Database for Institutions (HEIDI) and covers the period from 2007 to 2013. We also use the REF 2014 results provided by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

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Contributors

Author: Katarzyna Bijak

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