Undergraduate students can get great experience doing research with faculty! I have three students doing projects with me currently and two papers I will be presenting at the Eastern Economics Association next weekend that are co-authored with students and my fantastic co-author Erin Fletcher. This research often involves analysis of survey data from low income countries including for the two presentations for the Easterns which use data from a refugee camp in Tanzania and DHS data from Afghanistan.
The main benefit to doing a research project is you get personalized attention from a faculty member to help explore a topic that interests you. Think of the money that students pay in tuition to learn in a classroom full of people, in contrast research projects are typically done as independent studies that have fees equivalent to a regular class, but the teacher to student ratio is one! This individualize attention means you will likely learn more and if done well your professor will be a lifelong advocate for graduate school and career recommendations.
Speaking of graduate school. As soon as you start college people will be asking you what you plan do after you graduate. If you know you are going to graduate school or are considering it there are clear benefits to doing undergraduate research. First if you do it well you will get a great letter of recommendation, which is a very important part of the graduate school admission decision. If you do the research and find out you do not like doing it you can avoid the pain of going to graduate school. Finding out what you do not like is a benefit as economists often show revealing information is costly.
If you are not going to graduate school and know you will be working in an empirical field doing a research study can help you get your first job. The research should be listed on your resume, discussed in your cover letter and you should use the professor as one of your references if all goes well.
For those students not thinking of going to graduate school in a field related to the research and do not think their post college career will heavily involve data analysis, I would recommend against doing a supervised undergraduate study. To be done well these projects involve a substantial amount of work from both the student and the professor. What I propose is a research project roughly equivalent to the work of two to three typical semester long classes. Remember everything involves an opportunity cost with the time you are spending on this project you could be earning money at a job, learning another skill like a language be it computer or foreign, or even just enjoying your senior of college. Seriously, on the just enjoying your last year of college, I only took three classes my last semester in undergrad and was not doing independent research. I was accepted to graduate school in February so my last semester was a lot of fun. The extra time I had in the fall I used to study for the GRE, do an internship and apply to graduate school. Carefully consider the opportunity cost.
Students Questions: Benefits and Costs of an Undergraduate Research Project:
1.A) Explore the Benefits of an Undergraduate Research Project using Table 1 below
Table 1: Graduate School Plans and Benefits
| Do You Want to Go to Graduate School? | Benefits to undergraduate research |
| Yes | Increase your research and writing skills. You need letters of recommendation that show promise as a researcher, who better to write that than someone who has supervised your research. (also read the maybe answer) |
| Maybe | If you get a graduate degree you will write papers using the same skills as an undergraduate research project. See if you like doing the work and if you have the skills. |
| No | If your job will use empirical analysis doing your own research study is a great way to hone them and good to put on a resume and your professor can serve as a reference. |
1.B) List the opportunity cost of doing a research project. What would you do with your time instead if all the professors at your institution turn you down?
1.C) Can you still complete all of the course work you need to graduate if you do an independent study?
1.D) Find the direct costs of doing an independent study. For example how much are additional credits are there costs associated with taking a summer class (later I propose the student and professor work together during the summer). Also Estimate the opportunity cost, what would do if you did not do an independent study.
Student checklist assignment. Write a paragraph of roughly 300 words describing your benefits to doing a research project and the anticipated costs.
In the next post tomorrow I will talk about why I think more faculty should supervise undergraduate research and which faculty should consider doing it.