The accusation from disgruntled dons is serious. An assessment system devised to lift the quality of research in UK universities and post-graduate schools has distorted research output, created a cut-throat hire-and-fire labour market among academics and imposed intolerable pressures on institutions that should be concentrating their efforts on producing excellence rather than demonstrating it to government inspections.

But is this fair? In the case of business schools, for example, many prominent academics agree with the funding bodies: this accountability system, since its introduction in the 1980s, has, along with increased international competition and a global market for talent, helped produce British institutions that can hold their own against the best.