Footprints in the snow

Abstract

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), is the periodic calling to account the performance of university departments. Higher education funding councils inspects `inputs' (grant received, industrial contracts won), and `output' (mainly publications), to establish a sort of league table of academic performance. An evaluation of academic output between the UK and the USA demonstrates the weakness in the RAE. Klaus Hellgardt and Gilbert Shama, Department of Chemical Engineering, Loughborough University, UK, further discuss this issue.