The ARC proposes new rankings for next year’s ERA review

Time, as the Australian Research Council acknowledges is tight but the pace on review process had to pick up in December, when Acting Education Minister Stuart Robert called for a scale “that sets the ‘world standard’ benchmark against those nations and universities that are at the forefront of research” (CMM February 8).

The ARC offers two options to replace the existing five-rating scale which goes from “well below” through to “well above” world standard.

Both of the proposals are about changes at the top end.

Option  A adds a new ranking on top of “well above world standard, ” – “world leading.” It would be for “universities that are clearly above the average expected of high performing institutions and at the very top of universities worldwide.”

Option B divides the existing “well above …” into three, A (“comparable to other high-performing institutions”), AA (“clearly above the average expected of high performing institutions”) and AAA (“among the very small number of the best of the high performing institutions” and “world leaders in the field.)”

The A option is pretty much ratings as usual but B would shake things up. “The highest ratings should be a highly exclusive category reserved for units of evaluation performing at the forefront of their field worldwide. In particular, under Option B, it is expected that only a very small number of ‘AAA’ ratings would be awarded across all UoEs,” the ARC consultation paper suggests.

For researchers the delivery is in the detail on how high-performing institutions are identified but overall under Option B there would be a bunch of universities that would have to stop marketing disciplines as global top performers.

Consultation on the proposals closes April 22.