PAST REPRESENTATIONS

Response of ATHE to consultation document ‘Review of Research Assessment’ (2002)

The Association for Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE) is the subject association for Tourism in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK. Its membership of approximately 40 HEIs enables it to speak with authority on behalf of this sector. The Association wishes to stress the importance of tourism as a subject of study at UK HEIs where there are currently approximately 10,500 undergraduate, 700 postgraduate students and 70 doctoral students. Furthermore there are approximately 3000 students following higher education courses in tourism at FEIs (Further Education Institutions). ATHE would also like to stress the current and growing significance of tourism as an economic, social and cultural activity.

ATHE feels unable to reply on the point by point basis suggested by the consultation document since its points of difference are too significant but would like to make the following further comments:-

Key Point

  1. The ATHE invites the committee to test the impact of its proposals on tourism research and consider whether the proposed system will enable tourism research to develop or whether it will cause it to decline and
  2. if the latter, whether this is desirable for economic, social or academic advancement.

General comment

The Roberts Review appears to support increased research selectivity. This is understandable in medicine for example where it would clearly not be sensible to support research at 3 or 4 rated levels given the existence of? 5*/6* rated research. But this assumption does not work for emerging areas of research such as tourism where current levels of research excellence rarely exceed 4. This also precludes collaboration with 5*/6* rated research centres.

  1. Its approach appears to favour science and technology and well established research in traditional universities. Its scope does not seem to offer support for research in new fields or in new universities. Research for the services sector, including tourism, needs special consideration.
  2. It over concentrates on the large, the powerful and the established at the expense of the new and emerging. A consequence of this is that it does not pay sufficient attention to the consequences of reduced / zero funding for those research groups, networks and communities, such as tourism, which will be adversely affected by its plans. For example, in tourism, the research community is also prominent in producing textbooks. This important link would be threatened. There is a growing cohort of PhD students in tourism (approximately149 PhDs were awarded 1990-1999). The academics who supervise these students need to be located in, and legitimised by, the wider UK research community. Career aspirations and motivations are highly influenced by research activity, indeed academic identity is often formed by research activity.
  3. It does not attempt to identify value for money of smaller, emerging research groups. Some kind of cost-benefit analysis of would be welcome as a basis for evidence-based policy.
  4. Its emphasis is on Research Quality Assessment with some explanation of Research Capability Assessment. There are no proposals for the separate approach for the least research intensive institutions so the needs of new and emerging areas of research have effectively been ignored.

Tourism

  • Is one of the largest industries in the UK (the fifth largest in England), worth £74 billion to the UK economy in 2001, about 4.5% of the GDP. It is a major employer in the UK: 2.1 million people have jobs in this sector, which is 7% of the UK workforce. Some 10% of all new jobs created are in the tourism industry, which demonstrates the importance of this growing industry to the UK economy (Source: The Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons: Fourth Report, Jan 2003)
  • Is an increasingly important activity in peoples lives shaping identities and communities.
  • Has been overlooked by policymakers as evidenced by the response to the Foot and Mouth crisis where agricultural interests were advanced at the expense of tourism. This demonstrates the lack of a research base on the economic impacts of tourism in comparison to agriculture.

Tourism research

  • Has demonstrated a rising profile of research quality and outputs over previous RAEs
  • Demonstrated glimmers of 5*, a limited number of 4 centres, but was mainly rated 3a / 3b in RAE 2001. In other words much tourism research is at least of national excellence.
  • Is emerging and developing and needs to be designated as an emerging area with special funding for development
  • Is characterised by small specialist research centres in less research research-intensive (and generally the new) universities.
  • Has suffered a funding cut post RAE 2001
  • Does not need huge sums of money to support it  a healthy amount of activity developed over the period 1996- 2002 with limited funding
  • Is flourishing overseas (particularly in Australazia where a number of key UK academics now operate). UK research enjoys a high reputation internationally but this will be lost without continued support from funding councils.
  • Supports a number of journals
  • Supports a well established network of researchers who are key members of the tourism academic community in terms of curriculum development, internationalisation, and production of textbooks
  • Was atomised by the last RAE since it fell between a number of panels
  • Is not yet commensurate with enormous significance of tourism to the economy

What does tourism research need to prosper?

  • A funding mechanism that will enable its critical mass to emerge and support its development into a research area of international excellence.
  • The funding mechanism needs to address the following:
  • Cohesion: RAE 2001 meant that tourism research was split across a number of areas so that any critical mass was lost.
  • Visibility: The title tourism was not prominent in the RAE 2001 documentation
  • Advocacy: There were no experts representing tourism either in the design or the implementation of RAE 2001
  • Incubation: The special needs of a new and emerging area of research are different from those of established areas.
  • If the new assessment regime fails to address these issues, research in the UK will ossify around those subject areas that happened by to be prominent around the year 2000. New areas such as tourism will be unable to emerge, survive or develop in the highly selective recommendations proposed by Roberts.

Supporting documents:

The following documents are available in support of the ATHE submission:

  • Botterill, D., 2002, Tourism Studies and Research Quality Assessment in UK Universities, Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education, 1(2):71-74.
  • Botterill, D. and C. Haven, 2003, Tourism Studies and the Research Assessment Exercise 2001 (Guidelines No 11), Association for Tourism in Higher Education: Guildford.
  • Tribe, J., 2003, The RAE-ification of Tourism Research in the UK, International Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 5, pp. 225-234