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In terms of the good of universities, I remain, root and branch, an opponent of all forms of unnecessary assessment of academic work. This is not a fundamentalist objection. I don't believe there is anything immoral about research assessment. My objection is, instead, consequentialist, and starts with what seems to me to be an immediate empirical observation that the official assessment of the value of academic work is bound to do far more harm than good (except, perhaps, if a government department wants to spend £50 million on researching the options for energy policy: in that unusually important case, the best experts should compete for the job). The most fundamental objection to research assessment, however, is the sheer waste of human time and effort involved: all the energies of highly intelligent men and women that go into judging and strategising for a zero-sum game that is quite unnecessary. Then there is all the effort of 200,000 academic staff spent on producing research that, in most cases, is going to be read by almost nobody, and that will have zero impact on a world that would be a better place if they simply concentrated on teaching – or, for that matter, if they looked after their children better or went fishing more often. The amounts of money quoted as being distributed by research assessment – the sum is normally put in the low billions – are, frankly, trivial by the standards of this appalling waste of human resources. In effect, the UK decided to imitate the Soviet Union at roughly the time of its demise by establishing a set of production targets for goods that nobody wants. When it comes to ideas, it is only a tiny sliver of the very best that matter and, to quote Hume, the incentive of "literary fame" is quite enough to motivate such production. I may have left universities as an employee more than a dozen years ago, but I frequently return and I observe that the modern REF continues to have the same effect as the old RAE: it makes everyone unhappy. (Fonte: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/research-assessment-exercise-futility 05-10-17)
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