Impact of Student Research in Engineering: Case Study of a Non-Doctoral University in the Arab World

Student collaboration in research work is often done at the graduate and mostly postgraduate level. Universities with doctoral programs have a higher number of students involved in research projects and hence have a higher research output. On the other hand, non-doctoral universities suffer from a limited number of masters programs and graduate students but rely on faculty members to conduct research projects with the collaboration of undergraduate and graduate students. In this work, we investigate in the field of Engineering, the current status of student research and their impact on the quantity and quality of research in non-doctoral universities. Results show that publications with student collaboration are mostly high-quality journal articles or conference proceedings. Moreover, departments with higher student contribution have higher amount of research output. Finally, the h-index of faculty members is found to be positively correlated with the number of students involved in research.