The Impact of Government Support of Graduate Schools on the Research Productivity of Professors and Students

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of major funding projects for graduate education in Korea, specifically the BK21 and the WCU programs, on the research productivity of professors and young researchers. We apply the standard DID method, which compares the increase in research outputs as measured by papers per year between groups before and during the project period. The DID estimates show that the effects are quite different for different fields, but they mostly indicate that the BK21 project is more effective in terms of the research productivity of the participating professors, especially those who study science and engineering areas. With regard to the productivity of graduate students, the results show that there was an increase in the research productivity of locally educated Korean doctoral degree holders after the graduate funding programs, mainly in natural science and engineering fields.