Research Experiences Are the Value-Added of Higher Education. Our Students Will Tell You How
The title above is clickbait. Research experiences are not the value-added of higher education. They are just one of the most important ways in which higher education can pay back the increasingly costly investment students make in it. There are other ways — teamwork experiences, intercultural literacy, leadership, the integration of coursework and civic engagement — but they all stem from a simple idea: in the age of Google and Wikipedia, information provision should no longer be what higher education is all about. Instead, responsible higher ed teaches students to process, analyze, make sense of, use, and produce information. In doing that, students learn to solve problems and develop their autonomy.
Undergraduate research can be done at any kind of institution, and, historically, small colleges have been very good at providing those opportunities for their students. Large research universities — such as the University of Michigan, where this blog originates — have not always made meaningful research experiences as easy as they might have.
That’s because of a number of issues. Some of them have to do with the availability of armies of graduate students and the faculty perception that the “teaching mission” is separate from the research mission and grad student training. That world is changing, too, and, either way, the (slightly ironic) good news is that large research universities are fabulous places for undergrad research experiences partly because of the challenges.
This blog will document some of those experiences, reflect on lessons learned, offer tips and tricks, and share some of the very awesome and interesting things undergraduate researchers find in their work.
The authors of our posts will primarily be students in the Honors Program in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. That’s why we call it “Honors Research.” Their experiences and advice are going to be much more compelling than those of by faculty and administrators. A “near peer” has had experiences that are much more like those you will have if you are student in the twenty-first century. I could tell you all about my own undergraduate research experiences back in the 1980s, and if you’re the sort of thoughtful millennial or Gen-Z’er that most of you are, you might listen to me politely and even appreciate my anecdotes. But you shouldn’t confuse them with practical wisdom for the twenty-first century. You’ll get that from the other authors on this blog.
