“The panel responsible for judging the quality of politics research in the 2008 research assessment exercise has been criticised for ‘naivety’ after it judged the discipline to be one of the weakest in the UK. The UK’s 59 politics departments that submitted to the RAE received an average research grade of 2.34 out of 4, ranking the discipline 62nd out of 67 units of assessments in Times Higher Education’s Table of Excellence. This was despite the fact that a 2007 benchmarking review by the Economic and Social Research Council praised the discipline and concluded that ‘overall the story is one of strength’. A poor RAE result for the University of Liverpool’s politics department, which was judged to have produced no work of ‘world-leading’ (4*) quality, has been cited as a reason for its possible closure …” (more)
[Melanie Newman. Times Higher Education, 26 March]