What if the unthinkable happened and the U.S. government imposed a mandatory and public ranking of research universities and individual faculty according to their “research excellence?” Just to be clear, I’m not advocating that such a ranking be be done. However, no matter how stringently one might disagree with the idea of mandatory public rankings based on data that is currently largely private, I’ll bet that in the next few years, we’ll start to see policy makers cautiously exploring this idea.
Next year, those of us engaged in the university R&D ecosystem will get a rare opportunity to see speculation in action. The U.K. university system is about to launch a major new government-mandated university assessment process, the “Research Excellence Framework,” or REF. When I was in the UK recently, the upcoming REF dominated discussion at dinner tables and coffee breaks.
To read the full, original article click on this link: First, four star Army generals, now four star university professors
