Measuring What’s Valued or Valuing What’s Measured? Knowledge Production and the Research Assessment Exercise

Abstract

The final Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is being implemented midst rancour and debate about what counts as knowledge, and who will do the counting. This mechanism for measuring research productivity has created imperatives for most lecturers in the UK – intensifying the pressure on academics not just to produce ‘research outputs’ but to produce certain types of knowledge in certain types of publication. Its demise is not grounds for celebration, however, since a metrics-based alternative looks set to entrench existing funding success more deeply and make it even harder to do research that has no customer (e.g. Bekhradnia 2006). This chapter does not address which mechanism provides a more truthful account of the value of a set of ‘research outputs’. Instead, it is concerned with the power of such a mechanism to reinforce particular values and to inscribe resulting hierarchies regarding knowledge. We will argue that, regardless of what replaces it, the RAE process will have been productive, not just reflective of academic values. We will examine some of the consequences of the RAE for UK academic life, focusing on two themes, both of which highlight the operation of power through processes of knowledge production.