Research

RAE 2008 Results

RAE 2008 Results

The prestige of a good set of RAE results has helped the University to attract and retain high quality staff and students, and has generated investment in research from other sources.

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was the UK’s official survey of research quality in universities and higher education institutions, and the last one was in 2008. The results were very important to higher education institutions, especially those that are research-intensive, such as Newcastle University.

RAE 2008 was conducted by the four UK higher education funding bodies, with the primary purpose of using the results to determine research grant allocations to the institutions they fund.

It has now been replaced by the Research Excellence Framework.

RAE 2008 research categories

RAE 2008 was the first such survey since 2001 and ranked research quality in the following categories:

  • 4* Quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour
  • 3* Quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour but which nonetheless falls short of the highest standards of excellence
  • 2* Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour
  • 1* Quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour
  • u/c Quality that falls below the standard of nationally recognised work

The results of RAE 2008 cannot be compared with those of the previous RAE, published in 2001, because the methods of classifying research are different. For example, the highest grade in 2001 was 5*.