Roger Kaufman received his doctorate in economics from MIT in 1978. His research projects include an analysis of gain-sharing on productivity and wages, optimal college and university endowment spending policies, the effects of college major on post-graduate income and job satisfaction, other issues in the economics of higher education, gender wage gaps in the public sector and forensic economics. He has taught courses in macroeconomics, labor economics, mathematical economics, health economics, the economics of higher education and partisan economic issues at Smith, Amherst College, Williams College, University of California, Berkeley, and in Capetown, South Africa.

In the spring semester of 1994, Kaufman taught in the AKP program in Kyoto. He has received a Fulbright Research Fellowship, a fellowship from the EEC and an Austin Fellowship. In 1998, Kaufman was awarded the all-college Senior Faculty Teaching Award at Smith.