RAE 2008

Result on RAE is one of the factors I considered, before decide which UK’s uni I plan to go. The previous RAE was conducted in 2001. Recent RAE was released few days ago.

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was conducted jointly by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland (DEL).

The primary purpose of the RAE 2008 was to produce quality profiles for each submission of research activity made by institutions. The four higher education funding bodies intend to use the quality profiles to determine their grant for research to the institutions which they fund with effect from 2009-10. Any HEI in the UK that is eligible to receive research funding from one of these bodies was eligible to participate (http://www.rae.ac.uk/).

Assessments are classified into five grades:
• 4* world leading
• 3* internationally excellent
• 2* internationally recognised
• 1* nationally recognised
• unclassified

Anyway, the top rankings still dominated by research-intensive universities belonging to the Russell Group. Glasgow University is part of them as well.

Well, about Glasgow Uni, departmental email I received showed that:-

Biological Sciences graded at 'internationally excellent' and 'world-leading' is amongst the top 10 both in the UK universities as a whole and in the elite Russell group. We rank 2nd in Scotland.


For those who are intending to further study in the UK (especially postgraduate), RAE is a good reference to look for.

Next RAE will release in 2014.