Manchester Smashes the "Golden Triangle" for Research
The University of Manchester has smashed the "Golden Triangle" of research universities traditionally dominated by Oxford, Cambridge and London, according to the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, published today.
Based on any analysis of today's results, Manchester emerges amongst the country's top four or five major research universities and is proving competitive with the University College London and Imperial College and just behind Oxford and Cambridge.
65% of research staff (amounting to 1,193 full-time equivalent staff) at The University of Manchester are judged to be carrying out work which is "world-leading" (4*) or "internationally excellent" (3*).
Professor Alan Gilbert, President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester, said: "These results vindicate the decision to merge UMIST and the Victoria University of Manchester in 2004 and justifies our massive investment in new staff and facilities since then.
"We were committed to step change transformation and we had thought that this RAE may have come a little too early to demonstrate the impact of that change. But we were wrong. The evidence is now there for all to see - in terms of both Research Quality and Research Power (Quality x Volume), there is no longer a "Golden Triangle" in British Higher education research".
The results show an outstanding performance by The University of Manchester, confirming its position as a genuine international powerhouse, with exceptional performances in a wide range of disciplines.
For the Faculty of Humanities as a whole 22% of activity was classed as world leading and a further 40% as internationally excellent.
Principal success stories were in Sociology; Russian, Slavonic and East European Languages; and Iberian and Latin American Languages all of which were top on the Grade Point Average rating. Business and Management - with the country's largest submission - and Development Studies were top in terms of research power.
History of Art, Architecture and Design; Drama, Dance and Performing Arts; Economics and Econometrics, English and American Studies; and Town and Country Planning and Music all received high scores.
Manchester is now one of only a handful of UK universities with an internationally significant research profile over a very wide range of subjects. The scale and diversity of our submission confirms Manchester's status as a genuine research powerhouse.
The University of Manchester submitted research in 53 Units of Assessment, more than any other university in the UK.
Professor Alan Gilbert also said: "The very best international teaching and learning universities are great research institutions, so the excellence in research demonstrated in the RAE is good news for our students".
In the past four years, The University of Manchester has achieved a net growth of close to 1,000 new researchers and invested more than £403 million in new and refurbished facilities.
Research quality is assessed every few years through the Research Assessment Exercise to allocate research funding and to provide information on the quality of the research in UK universities.