Several top UK universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, stand to lose millions of pounds in research funding as a result of last year's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), Britain's major review of research quality. However, other institutions that focus less on research may see an increase in funding, setting off accusations that the two tiers of schools could be engaging in "class warfare." On December 18, the RAE released its linkurl:rankings;http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-2008-results-uk-universities for each UK university, which the government will use to calculate how to divvy up a £1.5 billion ($2.1 million) annual pot of research funding.
The RAE scores are drawn from the deliberations of more than 1,000 experts who assess the quality of around 200,000 pieces of work submitted by 159 research institutions over the past six years. The official government handouts will be announced in March. But according to confidential calculations using the released RAE metrics sent to the...
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