Academics are likely to be counting the days until the results of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 are announced, it has been suggested.
Academics in a total of 67 different fields of research are set to have the quality of their work made public in coming days.
The publication of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 is scheduled for Thursday December 18th and will set a new pecking order for excellence in research since the last RAE in 2001.
Speaking to Times Higher Education, the vice-chancellor of a university in the 20-strong research-intensive Russell Group, said: "You cannot underestimate how important the RAE is to the sector."
They added some vice-chancellors are concerned about what their own academic institution's results will mean for their future.
"If you have got a department that a university has invested [in] but really doesn't come off in the RAE, the university is faced with only really one choice, which is to disinvest," the source said.
The vice-chancellor, who told the publication that they did not wish to be identified, concluded that tight funding following the publication of the RAE will be compounded by the current turbulence in the economic environment.
Universities in the Russell Group include Queen's University Belfast, King's College London, the University of Liverpool, University College London, London School of Economics & Political Science, Oxford, Cambridge and Cardiff University.
The quality of the researchers' work will be graded on a four-point scale, with the lowest being 1* through to 4* being the highest. The results are set to determine the allocation of more than £1.5 billion in research-based funding to higher education facilities every year.
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