The Danger of Management by Metrics

The Metric-Measured Man

There was depressing news from Kings earlier this month. The University plans to cut 120 academic posts in the Schools of Medicine and Biomedicine (from a total of 777)  in order to fund new building. Chillingly, the redundancies will be decided by two metrics: research income and teaching hours.

Using metrics is somewhat fraught at the best of times, but is positively toxic when jobs depend on it. The idea of having stated targets is something that all universities have toyed with and many have implemented. There are clear examples where these targets have had a real effect, focussing minds and ratcheting up activity. But at what cost? Anecdotally the morale in these metric-driven universities makes Airstrip One look positively Arcadian.

Fundermentally Redesigned

So long, 2009.

In September this year it will be Fundermentals' fifth birthday. That's scary in itself: when I started writing this we were in the dog days of the Gordon Brown government, all the talk was of the next REF being entirely metrics-based, and Horizon 2020 was still being talked about as FP8.

Confusion, Damned Confusion and ESRC Statistics

In the heart of Death Star House,
the Unifying Calendar of Everything

I recently received a little gift from the Economic and Social Research Council’s chief executive, Paul Boyle.

“I am pleased to attach a report,” he wrote, “which summarises the general progress that has been made under the council’s demand management strategy, along with a digest of statistics for your own institution, which I hope you will find useful.”

For me, a data-fixated research manager, this was a very welcome present. Here, I hoped, was evidence of the value of our internal peer-review system. Here were hard facts. Here, I hoped, was something to crow about.

Unfortunately, the data presented by the ESRC obfuscated as much as they illuminated.

In Memoriam

ResearchFish, amongst others.

So farewell then
Research Outcomes System
Or 'ROS', as you were known
By some.

'ROS is accessed using Je-S credentials, hence all ROS users must have an active Je-S account to access ROS; log in to ROS using your Je-S username and password.'
Yes, that was your catchphrase.

But now your website is 'read only.'
You were beaten by a fish.

But that is better
Than being beaten with a fish.

E J Thribb
(Apologies to Private Eye)

Supporting Research at the Medway Campus

Drill Hall Library

In April we organised a meeting of academics and researchers working at the three universities that share the Medway Campus. For those of you unfamiliar with this, it's the site of the old naval base and dockyard in Chatham. It was in a fairly parlous state when the Universities of Greenwich, Kent and Christ Church moved in, but now they've redeveloped the fabulous old Edwardian buildings (including the Drill Hall Library, the longest library in Europe), as well as building some from scratch.