Monday 9th December 2013 - Universities' attitudes to policy impact

I have two daughters, both of whom work in strategy and policy-creating areas of government ministries in Westminster.  They have a lot of interactions with academics, commissioning research reports and making use of academic opinions and project findings. 

I had dinner with one of my daughters a couple of days ago and she was saying that she had recently received a commissioned research report that was so good that she stayed at her desk until 10 p.m. reading it, making notes on it, and identifying where its conclusions could be used to influence policy directions.  She was clearly bowled over by what the academic colleague had produced - "real policy-relevant research", she said.  And some of it was not based on original material but was more like the synthesis of views that a good etacher produces.

At one time my other daughter was commissioning research regularly from a very well-respected unit at a senior university.  She was frequently reduced to rage by their attitude.  They were constantly missing deadlines, re-directing the research brief so they could get a journal publication out of the work rather than prioritising the needs of the research funder.  They also had little idea of what could be put into practice in a policy context.

I will shortly be involved in the annual round of consideration of possible promotions to readerships and professorships.  For each candidate who is judged to have a reasonable case we seek a number of external referees.  If past experience is anything to go by the referees put forward will all be academics who will make comments on the size of the research grants obtained, the difficulty of winning them, and the quality of the resultant research papers published in major journals.  But in this era when research impact is a significant element of the Research Evaluation Framework I wonder whether it should really be people like my daughters who should be writing references instead.  Their views on the merits of particular individuals might be an interesting corrective to views elsewhere within the university world.