Source: Alamy

Just dropping in: 13 REF-related posts will expire shortly after the census

Cardiff University is ¡°in no way unusual¡± in hiring more than a dozen academics on relatively short-term contracts timed to expire shortly after the research excellence framework census date, an academic has claimed.

The positions are mentioned in documents provided to trade unions ahead of redundancy consultations for positions terminating between November 2013 and January 2014.

The REF census date is 31?October 2013.

The documents highlight 13 posts in which the ¡°relevant factor¡± for redundancy relates to the REF. One entry states, for instance, that the postholder has been hired ¡°to produce research outputs that will enhance the contribution to the School¡¯s REF submission¡±.

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All the posts are senior-level appointments and many are part-time, typically a fifth of full-time contracts (the minimum required for the REF). The majority of the appointments, which are spread across the university, are for two years or fewer, with one lasting around nine-tenths of a year.

The Cardiff academic who shared the information with Times Higher Education, who did not want to be named, admitted that there might be ¡°legitimate reasons¡± for the appointments, but believed their timing amounted to REF ¡°game-playing¡±.

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¡°The cost to the university is limited because the post is part-time and fixed term, but the resulting profile is clearly not an accurate reflection of the research environment or output capacity of the university, because the actual research may have been conducted [elsewhere]¡­and also because the posts terminate as soon as the outputs have been counted in the REF,¡± the academic said.

A spokeswoman for Cardiff said that most of the posts were for retiring academics who had agreed to short-term extensions ¡°to continue their research and teaching¡±. The extensions allowed ¨C in line with the academics¡¯ wishes ¨C ¡°high-quality research¡± conducted by them at Cardiff to ¡°be returned for the REF¡±.

Some of the other academics in question had moved to different universities, she said, but ¡°wanted to maintain their connection with Cardiff and agreed short-term, part-time contracts on a similar basis¡±. The spokeswoman added: ¡°In all these cases, Cardiff is entirely within the REF guidelines on academics eligible for return.¡±

The Cardiff academic did not believe that the institution¡¯s approach was unusual, a view echoed by another source, who told THE of rumours that several economics departments across the UK were planning to recruit US-based scholars for as little as two weeks around the REF census date.

¡°The main point is that it illustrates a problem with the REF process and undermines its credibility. It is hard to see how this farce is in the public interest,¡± the Cardiff academic said.

This view was endorsed by Gill Evans, emeritus professor of medieval theology and intellectual history at the University of Cambridge. She said the ¡°loophole¡± in the rules was greatly to the advantage of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, both in areas ¡°crammed with senior scholars who are retired or are from overseas and choose to live locally¡±.

But Graeme Rosenberg, REF manager at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, said that stories of institutions bringing in staff on short-term contracts had emerged during every edition of the old research assessment exercise.

¡°However, the numbers have proved to be small, and we therefore did not consider it necessary to change the rules to prevent this,¡± he said.

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paul.jump@tsleducation.com