The offspring of new public management in English Universities

New Public Management emphasizes the importance of Accountability and Performance evaluations. The purpose of this article is to explore the use of performance models and goal-setting in universities as a means for gaining insight into the use of similar performance approaches in the broader context of the new public management. The article deals with the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) which is a research evaluation mechanism used by the English Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) to determine the distribution of research funding among the universities.