RAE Results 2008

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008), seeks to assess the quality of research in universities, and it produced impressive assessment grades for the Business School and Law School.  Essentially, the RAE 2008 assesses the research outputs, environment and esteem in terms of their quality, significance and rigour from 2001 to 2007.  The assessment provides a quality profile for subjects ranging from:

• 4* (world leading)
• 3* (internationally excellent)
• 2* (recognised internationally)
• 1* (recognised nationally)
• unclassified (sub-national)

Business School

The Business School submission received a high quality profile: 90% was assessed  as ‘recognised internationally’ or higher.  Of this, 10% was classified as  4* ‘world leading’ and 35% 3* ‘internationally excellent’ .  A detailed breakdown of the spread of activity by outputs, environment and esteem shows the particular strength in research outputs and esteem (Table 1).  Within this profile, the submission was found to be particularly strong. ‘World class’ outputs were found in small business and entrepreneurship and marketing.  The Small Business Research Centre was cited as having world class activity across all sub profiles.  There was also recognition of plans to develop other research fields.

Table 1 showing overall quality profile and sub-profiles of activity in Kingston’s Business and Management submission. Full details can be found on the RAE website.

This result puts research undertaken in the Business School as joint 35th in the league table of 90 submissions and places it as the top post-1992 University in terms of research quality.

Table 2 showing Business and Management profiles for those submissions that were ranked as 35th in the submission.  Derived from RAE results.   Full details can be found on the RAE website.

These results show the vibrancy of research activity taking place in the Faculty of Business and Law. Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law at Kingston University, Jean Noel Ezingeard said:

“Overall, I am delighted with these results which reflect a lot of hard work and investment by colleagues across the Faculty. The results for Business and Management represent a significant shift in the quality and status of our research base since 2001.  On a straight forward grade point average these results place us ahead of many of our local competitors (old and new).”

The Director of Research, Professor Robert Blackburn, commented: “These results show that we have significantly raised the quality of our research endeavour since 2001.  This high quality feeds positively into our research, teaching and learning activities.  Well done to all our staff, students and stakeholders who have contributed to this success”.

Law School

The results of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 have been announced, and the research output of Kingston Law School has been highly rated.

50% of the research submitted by Kingston Law School was rated as being of a quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour; and 45% of a quality that is recognised internationally.

Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law at Kingston University, Jean Noel Ezingeard said:

“Overall, I am delighted with these results which reflect a lot of hard work and investment by colleagues across the Faculty. I am very pleased about our outcome for Law, especially since we were not entered in 2001 and it shows a growing research base.”

Matthew Humphreys, Head of Kingston Law School added:

"These results are a real mark of progress for the Law School - which was always known as a place of excellent teaching. It is great that the research output is now achieving recognition as well and there is some really excellent and interesting research undertaken by members of Kingston Law School. This result, achieved on the back of being the first submission of Law into the RAE by Kingston University, puts us on the map and shows that the School is a real place of quality for both teaching and research."