The Research Premium: Undergraduate Research Experiences and Early Employment

Research experiences provide educational and intellectual benefits to undergraduate students alongside traditional coursework. However, little prior work has directly examined the relationship between a student's participation in research and their later employment outcomes. Drawing on years of transaction-level administrative records from nine universities, we identify students with paid research experiences on grants from NIH, NSF, and other federal funders alongside a comparison group of students with paid federal work-study employment. Record linkage to later employment information allows us to follow students beyond their university years, measuring estimated salary (n = 15,528) and employment churn (n = 16,628). Using generalized linear models, we estimate differences between research and work-study experiences associated with these two outcomes. Those with federally funded paid research work as undergraduates, our findings demonstrate, have higher salaries and fewer job changes in their early careers. These results support the vision of the university as a site of integrated research and teaching, where students' engagement with research contributes to personal and professional development.