Acronymophobia

Art departments, like all departments in universities and colleges around the country, are bracing themselves for the next round of TQAs (Teaching Quality Assessments), poring over the latest directives from the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) - Parts I and 2 of the Handbook, with its 13 'Annexes' or appendices, and separate Code of Practice - in order to try to fit their own practices into the approved criteria. (The tediousness of this task is further complicated by the fact that the TQA process is itself under review.) Meanwhile, those same departments are not only simultaneously carrying out their own required internal peer review process, but also preparing their submissions for the next RAE (Research Assessment Exercise). The catch is that this process is partly contingent upon the outcome of individual and institutional bids for funding from, for example, the AHRB (Arts and Humanities Research Board) which was set up by the first New Labour government in 1998, the year after the QAA was founded, to fund research-based projects which the universities themselves can no longer afford to fund.

The bottom line in all this is money. The QAA, in consultation with HEFCE, SCOP and UUK (Higher Education Funding Council of England, Standing Council of Principals and Universities UK, respectively), publishes a report of its institutional and subject reviews which directly affects a universities funding which, in turn, affects the funding of each department within it. A perfect score of 24 for artistic impression in the QAA, allied to a maximum score of five for technique in the RAE (with required elements including a triple toe-loop, double lutz and back flip), boosts recruitment and guarantees the department concerned all the perks of funding, resources, research time and institutional status that accrue - to the detriment of low-scoring departments within the same institution. Unsurprisingly, art departments in regional and less high-profile institutions find it difficult to compete with, for example, Goldsmiths College, which scored highly in the last TQA round. This is despite the fact that more and more valuable human and financial resources are given over to processing the paperwork that this bureaucratic barrage generates.

Looming over all this is the implied threat that failure in the QAA and RAE processes will not only result in reduced funding but in relegation to the ranks of nonresearchbased universities - the academic equivalent of the piratical Black Spot that meant certain death to its receiver. But as with all of New Labour's interventions in the cultural sphere, the money comes with strings attached. Not only is art now inevitably defined for academic purposes in terms of its research-friendliness, but its outcomes must be seen to comply in the most banal and mealy-mouthed ways with New Labour's multi-cultural, socially inclusive, accessible-to-all, value-for-money, risk-free agenda. The mind-numbing effects of the endless round of filling out AHRB and other grant applications (some of which can run for 16 pages), preparing coursework for the TQA and material for the RAE is stifling creativity and the spirit of academic inquiry.

And who are these people who willingly sit on these QUANGOs (Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Organisations) scrutinising interminable grant applications, policing institutional self-assessment forms and proceessing inspectors' reports etc? It is probably true that back in the good old bad old days of more-or-less autonomous art schools there was some abuse of the informal self-assessment procedures that were in place. However a better regulated peer review process, of the kind that operates in America, would be infinitely preferable to this creeping academicisation of art. Nor is this an easy way out: peer reviewers can be the harshest and most rigorous of critics but at least they would have the respect of their colleagues.

The Government's obsession with lists and league tables that, incidentally, do not compare like with like is also breeding a culture of short-termism as colleges and universities - into which most former art schools have been absorbed - attempt to conform with each new government initiative and so quality for further handouts. None of these initiatives serves ultimately to benefit (art) education in the long term and the reason is not hard to find. It is there in the founding charter of the QAA: 'To promote public confidence that the quality of provision and standards of awards in higher education are being safeguarded and enhanced.' There is nothing here to inspire or illuminate. It is about bringing those recalcitrant artists and academics to heel. It is about votes.

This editorial was originally published in November 2002/ Issue 261, p13.