Faculty Research Assistantships as Financial Aid

Idea 

Suppose a small fraction of institutional financial aid were re-packaged as “faculty research assistantship” work study. Faculty members would be granted a budget for use during the academic year.

Context 

Consider the following facts

1. Many Mills students receive institutional financial aid. Some of these receive this as merit aid. 
2. All told, the college provides between $15 and $20 million UG FA per year. 
3. Faculty support resources are limited. Faculty do research. Faculty can use research funds to hire students. 
4. There is a push in higher education to give more students experience working with faculty on research. 
5. We struggle with ways to give faculty teaching credit for engaging in research work with students. 
6. Some of us balk at that if the faculty member’s research that is furthered (even if the supervision requires time/effort). 
7. Some institutions require students to work in campus jobs as a way of cutting operating expenses. 
8. Research shows that a top tool for retention and for long term attachment to institution is close working relationship with a single faculty member. 
9. Students learn best by doing. Skills may matter more than knowledge in “real world.” 
10. Some students learn best via intense and focused concentration on a single problem.

The What

Suppose we were to use $1 million dollars (about 5-8% of FA budget) and it goes to 500 students. That’s $2000 per student. At $10 per hour that would be 200 hours. But maybe make it best job on campus and so pay $15. That’s 130 hours. Over two semesters that’s about 5 hours per week.

We have on the order of 100 faculty. The above numbers would allocate 5 students to each faculty member on average. That might be high so let’s imagine that other units on campus get some of them. Or maybe better to work the calculation from the faculty side. Let’s imagine the standard is every faculty member gets the equivalent of roughly ten hours per week of research assistance. Using the above numbers that would work out to something like 200-250 students getting a $2000 faculty research assistance award and the total would be more like $500,000.

Administration. Faculty would need to “apply” with a description of tasks and skills needed and certify intention to actually have the work done during a given semester/year. The paperwork and time sheets and such could be handled through the same procedures that work study is currently.

Outcome

25% of student body has first-hand experience working on faculty research. Something like 25,000 hours of faculty research gets done. Even assuming that an hour of student research assistance is worth only 15 minutes of faculty work, that’s like giving each faculty member 65 hours. Given that we pay faculty on average something like $50-75/hour that’s turned into a $3,000 to $5,000 benefit.

In the aggregate that’s about $300,000 to $500,000 support for faculty work per year accomplished primarily through re-purposing funds with little net change.

These awards could be touted as special. They become a line on a resume distinct from “I got financial aid.” They might be fund-raisable in a manner that distinguishes them from just financial aid or just faculty support.

We note that this comes out of student time but we also note that from a pedagogical time it is time well spent. If we are an educational institution, it is not a stretch to say that spending time working for a faculty member is more likely educational than watching the door in the library.

Details 

A smart person could figure out what the error rates would be : how many folks would not get a position and so how would we handle the fall back in terms of financial need. One option might be to award slightly more work studies awards to faculty than there are students with awards. Make creative use of a little competition among faculty for talented students. Those who have interesting jobs and who train people well will be more likely to find research assistants. Add too a bit of funding that would allow someone who needed research assistance but could not find someone with work study to have funding to pay for help outside the system. 

Maybe restrict it to research work (not TAing) or maybe not. The awards might go only to sophomores and over if experience is an issue.