Are students drawn to universities because of their teaching or their research programs?

In the U.S., the tilt seems to be in favour of research. Why is that so? Is that how it should be?

Okonomos reviews some recent research on this debate

The paradox is that, though the higher education market is quite competitive, students, who should be most interested in teaching quality, are also drawn towards universities with better research reputation.

The paper reviews many theories in higher education, looking at the relationship between research and teaching. One theory is that researchers more effectively teach higher order skills and, therefore, increase student human capital more than non-researchers. In contrast, according to the signalling theory, education is not intrinsically productive but only a signal that separates high and low-ability workers. Under this theory then, researchers would make worse teachers and better screeners. That is, as researchers find it easier to teach better students who can move ahead with them rather than spoon feed students with lower abilities, a faculty with higher research reputation would automatically drive out low-ability students.

There are various issues involved here. Do universities prefer to reward research since it is easier to measure than teaching quality? Student evaluations, after all, are known to be beset with problems. Or is research valued because it brings prestige with it? Or, is unfunded research a public good? In which case, wouldn’t direct subsidies be a better way of financing such research than allowing for subsidies from teaching?

Indian students's choice of universities in India, on the other hand, are driven by a complex combination  of factors of which proximity has probably been the dominant one. But that is beginning to change. The availability of state of the art infrastructure and facilities at the university has become a major differentiator today - the Vellore Institute of Technology is a good example. The quality of teachers and teaching as well as reseach is mostly an unknown.

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