Impact, or The Business of the University

The impact measurement culture that exists within the university system in the United States—and I will argue that there is indeed such a culture—has not had a crystallizing moment of the sort provoked by the Thatcher initiative and its eventual codification in the form of the newest version of the REF. It has been developing in a more insidious and decentralized fashion, quite typical of the distributed federalism that is a characteristic governance mode of the United States.