Value for money in the UK Research Excellence Framework

Short summary of my white paper: Value for money in the UK REF: Why invest in post-92 Business Schools and sector-wide collaboration?

Anne-Wil Harzing - Wed 15 Oct 2025 08:36 (updated Wed 15 Oct 2025 08:36)

After making a strong argument on why we should support Business School research in my white paper In defence of the Business School: One myth and four truths, my my new white paper Value for money in the UK REF: Why invest in post-92 Business Schools and sector-wide collaboration? takes this a step further.

In this white paper I argue that:

1. rather than being discarded as low-value added institutions, post-92 Business Schools should be recognised as providing excellent value for money in their research, and in some areas could be argued to outperform more established Business Schools.
2. the UK’s current emphasis on incentivizing competition between institutions and concentrating QR funding in a small group of elite institutions might be counter-productive, especially for Business & Management, but also for the wider Social Sciences and Humanities.
3. investing a small slice of the QR funding to enable sharing of best practices would lift the entire Business School sector and promote collaboration over competition, essential for conducting high-quality research that addresses our manifold societal challenges.

Is your interest piqued? Then read the full story, lavishly illustrated with seven evidence tables, in my latest white paper: Value for money in the UK REF: Why invest in post-92 Business Schools and sector-wide collaboration?. If you prefer, you can skip directly to relevant sections of the white paper by using the links in the Table of contents.

Table of contents

• Post-92 Business Schools: Lower REF performance overall, but large variance across criteria and institutions
  
  • Small differences in GPA between different groupings
  • Significant variance within the group of post-92 Business Schools
• High “return on investment” for post-92 Business Schools?
  • Over- and underperformance across three groups of Business Schools
• Competitive research funding: pockets of excellence in post-92 Business Schools
  
  • Post-92 Business Schools punching (above) their weight in EU and UK government funding
• Doctoral training: post-92 Business Schools punching above their weight on doctoral graduates
• Replace heavily the concentrated QR funding with more distributed funding?
  • The case for distributed funding: higher marginal returns?

• Can we lift the UK Business School sector through strategic investment?
  
  • Invest small slice of QR funding into diffusion of best practices
  • Top-5 Business Schools sharing their strategies
  • Most improved Business Schools sharing their insights
  • Top-5 post-92 Business Schools sharing research support practices
    • Writing and publishing
    • Research diffusion & impact
    • Research environment
  • Research culture funding recipients sharing key lessons
    
    • What Wellcome Trust hope to achieve with IFRC
• In sum

Related white papers

• In defence of the Business School: One myth and four truths
• The ABC of research across career stages
• SAGEPolicyProfiles: a treasure-trove for discovering policy impact
• Sustaining motivation in change processes: Reframe your mindsets & actions
• Research Impact 101
• Reflections on staff development
• The art of academic writing
• The individual annualised h-index: an ecologically rational heuristic?
• Open Syllabus: a treasure-trove for research and teaching

Find the resources on my website useful?

I cover all the expenses of operating my website privately. If you enjoyed this post and want to support me in maintaining my website, consider buying a copy of one of my books (see below) or supporting the Publish or Perish software.

Aug 2022: Only £5.95...

Nov 2022: Only £5.95...

Feb 2023: Only £5.95...

May 2023: Only £5.95...

research focus positive academia research evaluation research funding bibliometric research citation analysis research metrics white papers

Reddit Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Email