Funding Undergraduate Research

My friend the gaussling, who hosts the blog Lamentations on Chemistry, posted a link to one of my earlier posts drawing the following comment from a reader.

"Maybe undergrad research should be funded by the colleges as part of the cost of education."

In a perfect world this would happen, but there are several factors that complicate the issue.

1)  The National Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity shows that training people in the sciences and engineering already cost more than training people in other fields.  Since most institutions use a flat rate tuition structure the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields may only be a break even proposition with the little support for research they provide now.  This is particularly true if the school is an underfunded and low tuition public institution (not that I know any of these).

2)  Schools make budgets based on the number of students impacted.  Specific faculty members research needs only touch a small number of students per year, so setting up and maintaining a research group is not viewed as cost effective.  We can try to use the equipment provided for teaching, but training STEM students in current techniques requires research grade equipment which is much more expensive and requires much more maintenance that the stripped down, often ancient, equipment we use in teaching.  In many cases modern technique also requires equipment well beyond that used in teaching.  Since research is not viewed a part of the education of students, resources to support purchase and upkeep of this higher end equipment is not available in the university budget.

Undergraduate and the bastard stepchild MS research should be supported.  It would be nice if colleges would do it, but they don't to anywere near a viable level.  Groups like CUR and NCUR do great work trying to spread the word on the needs for support.  Unfortunately, increasing pressure to find external support meet low and shrinking levels of funding.  We need to be creative and find new avenues to support what may be the most important activity of PUI and MS faculty members.