Reasons for Economics Professors to Work with Undergraduates on Research

The benefit to working individually with students is the same joy you get from teaching or if you are a parent seeing your children do well. The most fulfilling moment has been watching my students learn new skills. I have taken great pride when my undergraduate student presented and people thought she was an advanced graduate student. Sometimes you get lucky and your student is the speaker at graduation and thanks you personally in her speech in front of your chair, dean, and president. I tell my potential students that the greatest benefit is the love of teaching economics as the monetary returns are near zero and negative when opportunity costs are included.

Undergraduates are generally at best a net zero in terms of productivity as a research assistant. Think of your own productivity as a first year research assistant, I know I was terrible. Though an undergraduate can help with things like a literature search, data cleaning/summarizing, running regressions and even writing. A good mentor will both carefully check over the students work and give feedback.  This all takes time and essentially zeros out their productivity gains.

Supervising an undergraduate research project should not be undertaken by untenured faculty members worried about their research production for tenure given the net zero returns to research. One exception might be for liberal arts colleges that place a strong emphasis on teaching including supervising undergraduate research. Unless multiple senior faculty member tells you otherwise though supervising research is unlikely a good idea without a sufficient research portfolio to get tenure. That said an untentured faculty member whose research production far exceeds expectations might consider supervising a project particularly to strengthen their teaching case. Of course this assume you know what the research expectations are?

The monetary returns are likely near zero, but there are still potential gains to be made. Perhaps, the largest is when applying for internal funding. Many universities including my own have funding for conferences or summer research. Describing your work with a student is likely to gain your proposal favor with funding committees.  Of course you should highlight your work with student research in your annual or merit reviews or however your university determines raises. Though many universities do not give out annual raises due to budget issues or the amounts for merit are extremely small. Some universities may offer small payments (a few hundred dollars) for teaching independent studies or even give a course release after doing a dozen or more. Teaching an offload summer principles class would net more dollars (by a factor of 10), but if you are going to supervise student research anyways the extra money or course release is an added bonus.

Supervising a research project is also a long term and risky investment. You do have the potential to create a future co-author. I have one colleague who is co-authoring with a former student whose undergraduate thesis he supervised. The former student has since completed a PhD program and is a faculty member at another university. If your student does not go into academia that likely means they will make more money and who better to ask for donations to the department scholarship fund in 10 years then a student who you have mentored.

 

Professors Questions: Benefits and Costs of an Undergraduate Research Project:

  • Given the gains to mentoring undergraduate research are almost all non-pecuniary is this motivation enough for you to do it?
  • If you are not tenured do you have a sufficient research portfolio to get tenure already?
  • Are there any gains to tenure, promotion or merit from working with students?
  • What possible internal sources of funding are there that are competitive that student research would help increase my funding?
  • Are funds available for independent studies?
  • Can you get a course reduction for supervising many students?