RAE 2008

The results of the UK's 2008 Research Assessment Exercise finally came out. The Manchester department of philosophy ranked quite low, perhaps lower than before, although numbers are not easy to compare with those of 2001 since the methodology changed a lot. The university as a whole did well. It's number 3 in the UK in total research funding, right after Oxford and Cambridge (so ahead of UCL, which is quite impressive). It is also number 3 in number of departments with top marks, after Cambrige and Oxford. Clearly it helps here that it is such a huge university, with so many departments.

One ridiculous problem with this assessment is that institutions could choose how many of their staff to submit to scrutiny, and who they were. The tiny University of Bolton submitted only two philosophers, who happened to be pretty good, and was thus ranked above Manchester, who submitted 14.

Here's the Times article.