Ten Reasons Why We Should Boycott the REF
1. It is a considerable waste of time which would be better spent on teaching and research
2. It produces little obvious benefit, financial or otherwise, for those who participate
3. It distorts research by artificial timetables and demands for specific outputs
4. It pits universities in competition against each other in a parody of the free market encouraged by an avowedly neoliberal government
5. It inevitably favours already privileged institutions and reinforces the division between different kinds of universities
6. It largely benefits those institutions which need the benefit the least
7. With the greater emphasis on ‘impact’ it increasingly makes university research into an unofficial, unremunerated research and development arm of business
8. It encourages predictable, conventional and short-termist research
9. It discourages open-ended, blue sky research that is either without obvious applicability to the outside world or takes unusual and unconventional forms
10. It will inevitably become an instrument of university managerialism, particularly in relation to issues such as employment contracts
A small suggestion
We should boycott the REF, not by any mass movement, but by a simple act of individual refusal. We should continue to teach and research and let the teaching and researching inform each other. We should continue to publish, to go to conferences, to give papers, to supervise and examine students at all levels, to involve ourselves in other words in the activities for which we are paid and which we are good at. We should do nothing that compromises our students or our colleagues. However we should refuse to do anything to do with the administration and organisation of the REF, including filling in forms, writing narratives, attending meetings or any other activity the purpose of which is to prepare for the REF. This is not failing in our duty as academics; it is rather making sure we can do our jobs properly by not being distracted by irrelevant and time-wasting activities that take us away from our teaching, our students, and our research, what universities both ought to be doing and what they do best. This is not just about the REF or even about universities but about being able to imagine something a society that does not make the market the only model for every other form of activity, and micromanagement the main means by which we are governed.
When asked to do any of such activities, we should perhaps just say ‘I would prefer not to’
Bartleby
