Computer science professor here: I love to have students work on research in my courses, provided that they understand this is the point of the course and they choose to do it. Some of my best students (who went on to great careers in industry or academia) did terrific research projects of their own choosing.
I don’t ask students to do research projects because I expect “free labor” from them (unless they’re my PhD advisee, in which case it’s just poorly-paid labor.) In fact, most of the time I expect that undergraduate and MS projects will fail, or only be partially finished simply due to the schedule constraints those students have with other courses.
For students who are actually interested in conducting real research, the value to the student in being advised by me comes from the fact that they’re working on a research project that’s in my area of expertise and interest. The value to me is that sometimes I learn something new. There’s much less value in my advising students to do projects in areas that I wouldn’t be interested in researching myself, not because I’m looking to cash in on students’ labor, but because I won’t be able to offer them as much guidance.
Yes I think what the person you replied to identified as work isn't really much work at all in the sense that you would find in a software dev job or something like that. You aren't asking your students to write another database interface or something. You are giving them projects to let them know what you do, what that part of the field is about, and to expose them to ideas that they might carry forward. The view presented is so cynical is hard to take serious tbh.
I don’t ask students to do research projects because I expect “free labor” from them (unless they’re my PhD advisee, in which case it’s just poorly-paid labor.) In fact, most of the time I expect that undergraduate and MS projects will fail, or only be partially finished simply due to the schedule constraints those students have with other courses.
For students who are actually interested in conducting real research, the value to the student in being advised by me comes from the fact that they’re working on a research project that’s in my area of expertise and interest. The value to me is that sometimes I learn something new. There’s much less value in my advising students to do projects in areas that I wouldn’t be interested in researching myself, not because I’m looking to cash in on students’ labor, but because I won’t be able to offer them as much guidance.