Sir, - On a scale of one to five, using the HEFCE UK scale for Research Assessment Exercises, (Education & Living report on Queen's University Belfast, September 15th) I think I am a five in teaching. I am probably a four in administration (taking into account my departmental work generally, student support, university committees, grassroots involvement in university policy, service to university infrastructure, i.e. as an equal opportunities trainer and sexual/sectarian harassment adviser). In research I am a three or a four (I can hit an international high in quality, but I have difficulty producing material quickly enough for the quantity - albeit moderate - required in the RAE's timeframe). These grades are self-generated and have absolutely no empirical validity.
I am grateful to the Queen's Enterprise Initiative, through which I developed my teaching/learning skills. However, despite the vice-chancellor's mantra of "balanced excellence", there is only one excellence which counts. My department is targeted to achieve a research rating of four in the next RAE; in the one after that (if the RAE still exists) we will probably be given a target of five. I am sad that in Queen's vision for the future there will be no room for an academic like me.
Will universities in the rest of Ireland follow suit, and rid themselves of the likes of me? - Yours, etc., Jennifer Fitzgerald,
Senior Lecturer, School of English, Queen's University Belfast.