The role and value of research varies with the institution. The purpose for conducting research at a PhD granting institution is much different than is the purpose at a liberal arts university. In the former case, research is used to attract and train graduate students, to help fund the department, to bolster the university's reputation, to satisfy the investigator's curiosity, and to enhance his standing in the field. In the latter case, research is useful for teaching the principles of scientific investigation, for giving the students real experience with asking manageable questions of nature and coaxing answers from her, and for providing the faculty member with a reasonable means of satisfying his own curiosity as well.
Some students benefit greatly from prolonged, close work with a professor on a research project.
Careful, individualized mentoring generally is most possible in a teaching environment, where a faculty member has fewer students and less at stake in the outcome of a project than at a research university. It is doubtful whether they learned very much. At a teaching university, however, the professor and undergraduate student can busy themselves more with the process of discovery . A seemingly simple thing like learning how to design and carry out a controlled experiment can greatly improve a student's understanding of how the validity of conclusions depends upon the quality of the data, and how the quality of the data in turn is subjet to the limitations of the methods. This understanding is at the center of experimental science and often is best learned slowly and sometimes falteringly, without too much being at stake for the student or the professor.