Research assessment under the microscope: disturbing findings and distorting effects

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) to which every research-active UK university department has to submit every five years has fundamental resourcing implications for teaching and research – and thus, in the case of architecture, for the profession itself. Within the RAE, Architecture has always sat uneasily in a Built Environment ‘unit of assessment’ which appears to be dominated by construction and surveying – an unrepresentative state of affairs which can no longer be ignored. Leaders and letters in recent issues of arq (5/4, 6/1 and 2) have revealed the deep unease with which the results of the latest Exercise have been received. Now that full details of all RAE submissions have been published on the Web (www.hero.ac.uk/rae/under ‘Submissions’), a fully informed analysis is at last possible. This article has been written in the light of this latest information.