Not sure where the real value in this comes from as there is no information as to exactly what that "snap survey of papers" entails. Most journals, including the ones I have edited and the dozen or so where I sit on the editorial board routinely reject papers based on student samples. Indeed, the major ones are generally quite clear about the lack of validity of that approach unless the operative issue being studied was related to human behavior where experience and age do not matter much. They warn authors and have it in their stated policy that such samples are generally not going to lead to a good outcome. It is true that student samples were common in the past, particularly when it related to organizational behavior and organizational psychology as these areas built on a psychology tradition where student samples were common into the 1980s. However, today that is hardly the case. To start making blanket statements about what amounts to thousands of pieces of work based on an undocumented "snap survey" is hardly justified, nor is it justified to argue that one's own institution is the exception to this evil (again without any evidence). It is de rigueur amongst a certain style of business and management academic to blame the REF (or in its other incarnation "the neoliberal university") for the ills of the field in terms of research, scholarship and aspects of teaching. However, what is more to the point is that it has been the success of business schools (and the revenue they generate that props up most universities in many countries, such as the UK) and the consequent need to "feed the beast" with ever larger numbers of academic staff that invariably reduces the average quality of what is being produced intellectually. Doing away with the REF for business schools does little to resolve that problem except perhaps to degrade the intellectual value of what many business academics do (see my article on the value of "meaningless" research at https://www.ft.com/content/3ba9551e-4898-11e3-8237-00144feabdc0). Similarly, kicking the business school out of the university (which some academics argue for, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school) is a non-starter as most universities simply could not survive without the revenue that relates to what can amount to 50% of their total student enrollment and upwards of 75% of their international enrollments. Also, these sorts of never ending discussions (which go back to the old "physics envy" debates of the 1980s, replayed here: https://www.economist.com/whichmba/business-school-research-physics-envy-problem) perpetuates a "practice" versus "theory" model of intellectual production that is simply inappropriate -- there is absolutely no reason to believe that one cannot do both science and practice and, in fact, the best academics do both. Practice decoupled from science and based solely on practice and opinion is not only inefficient, it is dangerous as only with evidence and proper science can one debunk myths, no matter their reasonableness, apparent face validity and convincing nature and stature of the myth-maker. Of course, if you cannot do both, it is probably best to argue that the one dimension on which you cannot produce is not inherently valuable and hence should be discarded onto the scrapheap.