The impact of graduate students on research productivity in Korea

Abstract

Even though graduate students are critical for carrying out research, they have not been treated as important in the existing literature on research productivity. Accordingly, this paper focuses on whether the number of graduate students has a significant impact on their supervisors’ research productivity. In order to address this question, we have collected a large scale data on Korean academics’ research performance. According to the results of the analysis, first, male researchers were found to have more graduate students than female researchers. Second, we found significant differences in the total number of graduate students employed by senior and junior researchers. Third, researchers from the capital were also found to manage more graduate students. Last, as we found the number of graduate students to correlate with significant differences in researchers’ productivity, we put forward some suggestions for ways to support researchers who are female, young, and located in non-capital areas.