srhe

The Society for Research into Higher Education

Charlotte Mathieson


Leave a comment

A Culture of Publish or Perish? The Impact of the REF on Early Career Researchers

By Charlotte Mathieson

This article aims to highlight some of the ways in which the REF has impacted upon early career researchers, using this as a spring-broad to think about how the next REF might better accommodate this career group.

In my role at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick I work closely with a community of early career researchers and have experienced first-hand the many impacts that this REF has had on my peer group; but I wanted to ensure that this talk reflected a broader range of experiences across UK HE, and therefore in preparation I distributed an online survey asking ECRs about their experiences and opinions on the REF 2014.

Survey overview

– 193 responses collected between December 2014 and March 2015
– responses gathered via social media and email from across the UK
– 81.3 % had completed PhDs within the last 8 years
– 41.5 % were REF returned
– 18.7% were currently PhD students
– 10.9% had left academia since completing a PhD

5 main points emerged as most significant from among the responses: Continue reading

Ian Mc Nay


Leave a comment

Applications to UK universities: digging beyond the headlines…

By Ian McNay

‘Record numbers apply to enter higher education’ was the good news reported at the end of the first application period in January by most papers – I have not seen one to query this, but I have not checked them all. The March figures are now out, almost unreported, and confirm what was true in January: applications are up on last year, by just over 2 per cent. The increase for the UK is lower than that, at about 1.6 per cent.

That is good, but the claim of a record depends what you count and compare with. The secondary headline was that this record showed that high fee levels had had no impact, implying that the record applied where fees had been raised. Not true. Continue reading