As the clock ticks down to midnight, more than 50,000 academics across the UK wait to see how their research rates in comparison with their rivals (sorry, colleagues) in their fields.
They already know how they themselves have been judged by the expert panels of the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 and are basking in the approval of their peers – or smarting from a crass failure to see the value of their research work over the past four years. But at midnight the results are made public on Guardian.co.uk/education and other websites and they can see how they have fared against the competition.
With passions running high one vice-chancellor confessed that he felt as if he had staked the family inheritance on the 3.15 at Wincanton. There will be some sore heads in the morning as universities weigh up how much they have invested in time and money attracting big stars with the payoff from the RAE results.
Universities will be rushing to celebrate their achievements, and rightly so, but there is also concern about game playing and whether the funding council's failure to collect data on the percentage of staff who have not been entered for the exercise leaves the whole business open to challenge. It certainly raises awkward questions about monitoring the RAE for equality concerns - it's difficult to judge, for instance, whether a high proportion of women researchers were excluded.
Has it been worth it? Are the results fair in your discipline?
