Tiffany Jenkins: Scholars strike back at 'economic impact'

Published on Sunday 15 November 2009 21:27

DESPITE Labour's promise that "education, education, education" would be its priority, when the then education minister, Charles Clarke, dismissed "the medieval concept of a community of scholars seeking truth" as "a bit dodgy" back in 2002, it became clear that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake was judged as outmoded by our political masters.

The role of higher education has always been contested. But in recent times a war has been waged on its research remit. In the last ten years the purpose of the academy has been degraded. Universities have been turned into an instrument to improve the economy and create social cohesion. As a result, knowledge is compromised and students failed.

This summer, the Labour government gave up any pretence that it cared for scholarship, as the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills was merged with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Today, no government ministry contains the word university.

Now, in response to new proposals for funding and evaluating research that are truly a bit dodgy, there is a revolt against the demands that the academy act like a business or do social work. Scholars are striking back.

A campaign – "Stand up for Research" – spearheaded by the UK University and College Union is gathering support. A petition is growing against the latest attack on university research, this time by the higher education funding councils, which suggests that 25 per cent of the new Research Excellence Framework (REF), is to be assessed according to "economic and social impact".

The policy proposed by the higher education funding councils lists 37 "impact indicators" that the research of top thinkers will be judged against and funded on the basis of. These include: creating new businesses; attracting R&D investment from global business; commercialising new products; improving or informing public services; improving patient health outcomes; and improving social welfare, social cohesion or national security.

This is not the language of ideas or the arts, but of short-sighted, philistine bean-counters. Watch as historians have to demonstrate how their research on the social status of Victorian children can solve the contemporary financial crisis, and as literature professors are forced to evaluate their analysis of imagery in the poetry of Robert Burns, by demonstrating that it leads to reduced rates in obesity.

Those taking a stand against this scheme are luminaries who include half a dozen British Nobel Prize-winners. Signatories such as Richard Dawkins, Professor Harry Kroto; a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and the President of the Botanical Society of Scotland, not to mention senior scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

They are right to be angry. This proposed system is an overly prescriptive, top-down approach that follows a government line which may not correspond to the interests of university researchers, or, indeed, society.

Most new ideas do not immediately make money, many good ones never will. And research is not always "on message" whether it is on terrorism or health. Indeed, every breakthrough in intellectual and scientific thought usually challenges the prevailing order. We should resist these demands for the sake of academic freedom.

The impact agenda betrays a lack of understanding of how knowledge advances. The Royal Astronomical Society explains that funding scientific research "is not like investing to win Olympic medals, where specific short-term objectives can be set and achieved". Instead, "science advances on a broad front and has indefinite horizons that require a long-term vision".

As this year's Chemistry Nobel prize-winner, Venki Ramakrishnan, who is among the signatories, elaborates: it is often basic open curiosity-driven research that has application in the long-run. DNA sequencing is a billion-dollar industry now, but scientists didn't start out knowing that it would be.

Cyclosporin, the immunosuppressive agent that revolutionised organ transplantation, was discovered, not through a funded research project specifically addressing the problem of graft rejection, but as part of a general screening programme.

Of course, not every idea pursed will turn out to be useful or make money. But, even so, no subject is really ever useless. Or rather, usefulness cannot only be judged in terms of economic outcomes or social impact. Arts and literature research is never going to result in thousands of valuable patents, but it can open our eyes to human civilisation and some of the most profound reflections on life.

The deepest benefits of academic research are often the ones we cannot measure so easily. The results that we do not anticipate may prove to be the greatest value of all.

This impact agenda doesn't take into account the influence of academics on the work of other scholars and does not include their influence on the students. But surely adding to the sum of human knowledge, changing the minds of other researchers and stimulating the new generation is work that really matters.

Historically, the model for the university tutorial is the classical sage in dialogue with his pupils, imparting wisdom by example and through lessons in the art of argument. The idea of "education" deriving from "educere", the Latin for "to lead out", was bound to the notion of character formation. This important educative and transformative relationship is ignored by this agenda. The university is the starting block for future generations to think.

If implemented, the REF impact criteria will prove costly as it risks undermining support for basic research across every discipline, from physics to Latin.

The UK funding councils should withdraw the current REF proposals. Instead, let us work with academics and researchers on creating a funding regime which supports and fosters basic research in our universities.

Universities must continue to be spaces where the spirit of adventure thrives and researchers enjoy the academic freedom to push at the boundaries of knowledge in their disciplines. Let us value speculative research, experimentation, serendipitous discovery and useless knowledge for all.

&#149 Dr Tiffany Jenkins is director of the arts and society programme at the Institute of Ideas