Training for the Industry: Examining the Use of Real-life Consultancy Projects in Development Studies Programmes

I. Introduction

Development degrees have begun integrating consultancy projects carried out by groups of students for real-world, external clients into their curriculum. For these consultancies, students are tasked to work on a specific question or topic of interest to their client and to produce answers and recommendations, usually to be delivered in the form of a report and/or a presentation. Students are drawn to these programmes by the promise of greater employability (O’Leary, 2013) and closer insights into the work of NGOs, international organizations, development banks, aid agencies, social enterprises and other development actors. Departments aim for increased levels of student interest, better professional placements of their graduates and the institutional prestige that comes with collaborating with reputable organizations from around the world. And clients hope to benefit from the ability to draw on the combination of rigorous and out-of-the box thinking that young master students typically bring to the table, the prestige of collaborating with an internationally recognized university and the cost-effective sourcing of valuable services (Sprague and Hu, 2015).

By relying on this teaching device, development studies follow in the footsteps of other disciplines in which such exercises are historically more common: above all in masters of business administration (MBA) and master of public administration (MPA) programmes, but also information and communications technology (ICT), architecture or engineering. Furthermore, their use follows a number of long-standing trends in both higher education and international development. Development studies degrees have proliferated due to the marketization of higher education and the ensuing pressure on universities to attract tuition fee-paying students on the one hand, and the continued eagerness of younger generations to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges on the other (Denskus and Esser, 2015). This proliferation, in turn, sustains high levels of labour supply relative to the number of jobs available in the development sector, making it challenging for graduates to find decent jobs and often forcing them into internships or volunteer work to gain professional experience (Denskus and Esser, 2015). Students concerned about their ‘employability’ therefore increasingly look for universities offering more ‘practical’ programmes that deliver skills and experience said to be valued by employers (Boden and Nedeva, 2010; Harvey, 2000; Moreau and Leathwood, 2006). This first trend is compounded by calls from scholars and practitioners to bridge the gap between theory and practice (Tiessen and Smillie, 2017), as well as research in the pedagogical sciences highlighting the benefits of experiential learning activities (Taylor and Fransman, 2004). It is reasonable to assume that these trends are not short-lived and that we should therefore expect the number of universities using consultancy projects to keep increasing in the years to come, even if their numbers are currently still limited.

This poses a challenge to development studies because scholars have not yet systematically reflected on what the use of real-life consulting exercises means for the way we educate our students. What are some of the issues and challenges raised by relying on this teaching device in the specific context of development studies? More specifically, to what extent does the integration of a third party into the traditional university-student relationship constitute a risk to our ability to uphold core academic principles? And if, again, one were to consider the continuing spread of such modules as inevitable, what can be done to avoid pitfalls and harness any opportunities they may provide, particularly in the post-Covid age?

Through a critical self-reflection on three years of experience managing a consultancy project module for a development degree, I attempt to answer these questions. I identify three major, largely unexplored challenges to three core academic principles: scientificity, fairness and ethics. I systematically analyse common issues in these areas and discuss various ways in which they could be addressed. As such, the article inserts itself into scholarly debates that have highlighted the problematic aspects of trends towards ‘vocationalization’ of higher education and the teaching of development studies (Courtois, 2019; Denskus and Esser, 2015), but at the same time, it also seeks to make a contribution by adopting a pragmatic and constructive approach that critically examines concrete courses of action and attempts to sketch out ways to harness consultancy projects’ transformative potential in a post-pandemic world.

II. The Rise and Rationale of Consultancy Projects

It is worth clarifying at the beginning of this section what we mean when we speak of consultancy projects. The projects discussed in this article are distinct, on the one hand, from work placements, practical or fieldwork projects, and on the other hand, from ‘simulated’ consultancies. In the former, students are directly integrated into the client organization, are usually physically present, and therefore offer just as much of their ‘manpower’ as their ‘brainpower’ (Epprecht, 2004; Rosser, 2012). The final product on which they are assessed by their university is generally some form of report in which students reflect upon their experiences. In the latter, students conduct a research consultancy, but not for a real, external client organization. Instead, in these ‘simulated’ projects, students are asked to find practical answers to a problem given to them by their teachers (Vining and Weimer, 2002). In both instances, the relationship remains largely a binary one, either between the student and the organization at which he/she interns, or between the student and the university in the case of the simulated project. The projects I analyse throughout this article are, however, characterized by a tripartite relationship and involve students who remain at their university but work for (instead of within) a client organization, producing a written report or some other form of research output for the benefit of the client (see Figure 1). These distinctions are important because I argue that these particular characteristics and configurations have distinct implications for all parties involved.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Source: The author.

Within development studies degrees, the use of consultancy projects is currently mainly confined to the English-speaking world and more specifically to a few universities in the USA and the UK. Based on a search of university websites, the London School of Economics and Political Science is currently the only British university offering consultancy projects as part of ‘pure’ development studies degrees. ¹ Additional institutions such as the University of Sheffield ² or University College London ³ include them in their urban planning in developing countries degrees, most likely as a disciplinary overspill of their architecture and urban studies components since consultancy projects are more common in these fields. In the United States, the University of Minnesota ⁴ and George Washington University ⁵ are examples of institutions that use consultancy projects in development studies degrees. And around the world, consultancy projects in MPA degrees, where this teaching device is more common, sometimes also include client organizations from the development sector. ⁶

Consultancy projects for external clients working in development are not yet the norm, but I argue that it is reasonable to assume that the demand for such programmes and degrees will continue to grow. This is because their use occurs in the triple context of the ongoing neoliberalization of higher education (Maisuria and Cole, 2017; Mercille and Murphy, 2017; Saunders and Blanco Ramirez, 2017), characterized by the ‘emergence of the “market-driven” or “pragmatic” university’(Prokou, 2008: 387), of a ‘de-standardization of employment that has brought multiple forms of insecure work’, in particular for young people (Armano and Murgia, 2013; MacDonald and Giazitzoglu, 2019: 724), and of a growing integration of experiential learning into our curricula (Nelson and Klak, 2012; Tiessen et al., 2018).

At the intersection of the first two trends lies the concern with ‘employability’. In what scholars have widely referred to as the ‘employability agenda’ (Arora, 2015; Higgs et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2016; Matherly and Tillman, 2015; Wharton, 2017), universities are pushed by policy makers to implement changes ‘leading to qualifications better suited […] to the needs of the labour market’ (Prokou, 2008: 387). This employability agenda fundamentally ‘questions the ideas of Humboldt and Newman that knowledge is a purpose in itself and that culture and science are the mission and reason for the existence of the university’ (Prokou, 2008: 391).

At the same time, students are increasingly worried about their chances to compete in ‘what is perceived to be a congested and competitive graduate labour market’ (Tomlinson, 2008: 49). This is particularly true in development studies and the social sciences, where it is not uncommon for highly educated graduates from top universities to start their professional careers in unpaid or poorly paid internships unless—but sometimes even if—they already have several years of work experience (Denskus and Esser, 2015). Relevant professional experience and networking opportunities are therefore at a premium, and students may particularly appreciate a chance to acquire them while studying for a postgraduate degree.

Another important aspect of the employability agenda is that the ‘higher education sector needs to be pulled away from excessive academicism and forcibly turned towards the “real world”’ (Courtois, 2019: 2). According to this logic, practical, job-oriented teaching and learning focused on the acquisition of ‘transferrable’ and ‘soft skills’ should partially and/or progressively supplant disciplinary knowledge, often considered ‘too abstract’ (Courtois, 2019: 2). Due to reduced government funding, universities are left increasingly reliant on income from tuition fees and therefore have much to gain from addressing student concerns and positioning themselves as producers of highly employable graduates. Numerous websites and brochures that highlight graduate earnings or low unemployment rates are an indication of this.

Furthermore, consultancy projects are also in line with a pedagogic trend towards an increased use of experiential learning, of which scholars have long highlighted the benefits (Cunningham, 1997; Flynn et al., 2001), including in development studies (Pettit, 2006). The two main pedagogical objectives of using consultancy projects are to foster a better understanding of the utility and applicability of knowledge (both empirical and theoretical) to real-world/professional settings, that is, the ‘bridging of the theory-practice gap’ (Roberts and Pavlak, 2002: 179) and the development of certain skill sets (e.g., working in a team, problem-solving, presenting, etc.).

The literature has been almost unanimously supportive of the proposition that these objectives are indeed being achieved, finding that consultancy projects lead to ‘increased course satisfaction, policy analysis, general professional skills and dedication to community involvement’ (Ahmed, 2015; Allard and Straussman, 2003; Ardley and Taylor, 2010; Camill and Phillips, 2011; Flynn et al., 2001; McGaw and Weschler, 1999; Roberts and Pavlak, 2002; Sprague and Hu, 2015: 263; Whitaker and Berner, 2004).

The literature also discusses various practical, micro-level implementation challenges associated with the use of consultancy or capstone projects (Ahmed, 2015; Allard and Straussman, 2003; Camill and Phillips, 2011; Meltzer, 2013; Roberts and Pavlak, 2002). However, across disciplines, there have hardly been any efforts to reflect more systematically and critically on some of the bigger implications of adopting this teaching device. To what extent does the inclusion of a third party into the teaching relationship pose a challenge to our ability to uphold core academic principles, such as scientificity, fairness and ethics?

I argue that in the field of development studies, this question is perhaps of greater importance than in other disciplines. First, because development studies have historically had a ‘normative point of departure’ of wanting to ‘improve people’s lives’, regular critical examination of whether our pedagogy actually contributes to this larger goal is necessary (Sumner, 2006: 645). This is especially the case for student consultancy modules, because we need to worry about their work and actions as ‘student-practitioners’ as well as about how they will practise development after they graduate. Second, international development and, in particular, foreign aid is characterized by strong structural power imbalances and various inequities between the Global North and the Global South (Goudge, 2003; Martins, 2020). This raises ethical and political issues because, in undertaking real-work consultancy project modules, departments or universities become more than mere critical observers. Thus, if we assume that consultancy projects in development studies are here to stay, if not expand further, we cannot skip serious engagement with these issues.

The article is based on my critical self-reflection as a practitioner—in this case, of over 3 years of personal experience managing consultancy projects, dealing with client organizations and advising teams of student consultants—and is more generally inspired by analytic autoethnography (Anderson, 2006). According to Leon Anderson, ‘analytic autoethnography refers to ethnographic work in which the researcher is (a) a full member of the research group or setting, (b) visible as such a member in the researcher’s published texts and (c) committed to an analytic research agenda focused on improving theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena’ (Anderson, 2006: 375). It is effectively a realist form of ethnography that sets itself apart from ‘evocative’ ethnography with ‘postmodern sensibilities’ (Anderson, 2006: 373).

All research in which the researcher is also actively carrying out the activity that is the subject of the research raises specific challenges, including with respect to reflexivity, representation and ethics (Lapadat, 2017). Anonymization is crucial, which is why, for the purposes of this study, I anonymized the university, the department, client organizations, students and colleagues. Furthermore, when using examples of consultancy projects, I altered project subjects and clients. They are projects that could have happened, but not actual past projects.

The department providing the setting for this study introduced consultancy projects in the 1990s. This long institutional experience with this teaching device makes it a good case for investigation. As far as I can tell, based on publicly available information on other programmes that use consultancy projects, it is also a fairly representative case in that their method of implementation does not differ significantly from other departments and universities (see also the following section).

I did not occupy a senior role within the department as I was first hired to teach on the consultancy projects on a temporary and part-time basis, with my main responsibility being mentoring project teams. This entailed providing academic guidance but also dealing with potential team conflicts. I then took on a more senior role within the course and was responsible for (co-)managing all aspects of the module, including client management, team allocation, teaching activities and assessment, in addition to teaching on the module and mentoring project teams. I held this position for 3 years. The programme I was working for had annual cohorts of somewhere between 80 and 100 students, which would be allocated to a total of about 20–25 projects. I mentored about half of the project groups in any given year, and assessed a similar number of them, which means that I have coached and examined over 30 different consultancy projects. The rest of the projects were mentored and assessed by other members of the programme’s teaching team.

The data I rely on for this article includes self-reflection, notes, student feedback, exchanges with and feedback from client organizations and conversations with teaching staff involved in the creation and/or administration of the consultancy projects.

IV. Overview of the Project Cycle

For the teaching team, work on the consultancy projects begins well before the start of the academic year. Over the summer, the department sends out a call for proposals to its database of clients it has been continuously building over the years. Clients then respond by returning project proposals. Following that, and depending on the response rate and projected numbers of prospective students, the teaching team selects projects among which the students have the opportunity to choose by putting forward a number of preferred choices. This step is to ensure that the projects and problems are interesting, relevant, ideally linked to course themes, sufficiently challenging and rewarding, and that they cover a wide array of types of organizations, topics and world regions. After students express their preferences, the teaching staff allocates students to project teams of between three and five people, based mainly on their top choices but also taking into account other potential factors such as student skills and interests, special project requirements, diversity, etc. Each group also receives a coach from among the course staff who periodically meets with students and provides academic guidance.

Once the teams have been allocated and introduced to their coaches and clients, they develop, draft and agree on the project’s terms of reference with the client organization—usually on the basis of the original project proposal. The students then have roughly five months to produce a report of up to 10,000 words and present it in a final presentation to the client, with both of these outputs being assessed by teaching staff only. During the year, the department hosts workshops designed to help students carry out their projects. However, beyond these sessions and the meetings between teams and their coach, the teaching staff are not involved in the execution of consultancy projects, and student teams work autonomously. Beyond introducing the teams to their clients, the teaching staff are also not involved in the teams’ relationship with their clients during the project cycle—barring any problematic developments.

The above setup is but one way of structuring this exercise. One could, of course, vary several of its aspects, from the form of the output to the modalities of assessing it, to the role of the coaches and the clients, or the project milestones. However, studies of consultancy or capstone projects in MPAs or public policy programmes and publicly available information on programme websites suggest that they are carried out in broadly similar ways (Allard and Straussman, 2003).

In the following three sections, I focus on the three key challenges that emerged from my experience in administering and teaching consultancy projects in a development studies degree: scientificity, fairness and ethics.

V. Challenges to Scientificity

One of the key challenges of consultancy projects for teaching development studies arises from the fact that client organizations sometimes do not share the same commitment to science that still underpins much of higher education. As actors in the corporate world, civil society, or international organizations, they often practise and exhibit a certain distance from academic norms. Students are therefore exposed—to varying degrees—to a process of ‘de-academization’, to borrow a term used by sociologist Aline Courtois (Courtois, 2019).

Historically, the purpose of what universities have tried to instil in their students can perhaps best be summed up by the words of Boulton and Lucas:

Generation by generation universities serve to make students think. They do so by feeding and training their instinct to understand and seek meaning. It is a process where-by young people, and those of more mature years who increasingly join them as students, are taught to question interpretations that are given to them, to reduce the chaos of information to the order of an analytical argument. They are taught to seek out what is relevant to the resolution of a problem; they learn progressively to identify problems for themselves and to resolve them by rational argument supported by evidence; and they learn not to be dismayed by complexity but to be capable and daring in unravelling it. They learn to seek the true meaning of things: to distinguish between the true and the merely seemingly true, to verify for themselves what is stable in that very unstable compound that often passes for knowledge. (Boulton and Lucas, 2011: 2511)

Organizations in the development ‘industry’ may share or subscribe to many of the aforementioned objectives. But at their very core, these are not their primary objectives. The vast majority of organizations in development work for a specific purpose (e.g., fighting climate change, addressing gender inequality, etc.), whether they are NGOs, aid agencies, social enterprises, international organizations (IOs), or even for profit development consultancies. Their first major objective is impact. However, by drawing on organization theory, we can quickly identify the other major priority for an organization: survival and growth (Büthe et al., 2012; Starbuck, 1965). Scholars have indeed found that ‘organizations—including firms, IOs, and NGOs—[…] put self-perpetuation ahead of all else’(Büthe et al., 2012: 580).

The client’s pursuit of these two core objectives need not conflict with the university’s interest in scientificity. In fact, they are often aligned because client organizations lack the resources or skills to follow, process and understand the latest scientific debates and advances in research, or to conduct a rigorous investigation into a topic important to them on their own. Clients believe that it is in their best interest to ‘follow the science’. The following could therefore be a fairly typical project question: ‘What are the causes of high levels of adult illiteracy in upper middle income countries and what policy interventions can effectively address it? How can our organization make the greatest impact?’

Sometimes, though, things are different, and organizations then display a set of preferences, objectives and inclinations that are often incompatible with the academic ideal of open-ended, evidence-based analysis. This can start with the way in which the research question is formulated or the definition and scope of the problem that is to be investigated. For example, a question that could be on a project proposal would read something like this: ‘How can local governments best harness blockchain technology to improve the delivery of public-private partnerships with the aim of strengthening social safety net provision?’ The question is packed with underlying assumptions about the effectiveness and desirability of certain development interventions and public policies that would rightly be challenged in an academic context. It is no surprise to anyone familiar with the development sector that the ‘message’ organizations want to convey is, in some cases, already predefined. After all, these organizations are in the business of convincing people: convincing governments to change policies, convincing donors to give them money, etc. And managers are sometimes of the opinion that the most convincing message for their purposes is not the scientifically most accurate one.

This fundamental tension can pose problems for students and the university. An example is a team that worked for a development bank on a project on the potential of using ‘big data’ in public administrations of developing countries. The team reached out to their coach because they were in doubt about whether their project was up to the university’s academic standards. In calls, emails and meetings, it had transpired that what the client wanted was not so much an investigation into whether it was a good idea for governments to introduce these technologies. The client merely wanted a few ‘success stories’ and ‘best practice’ examples that they could pitch to governments as projects. They had little interest in a critical, evidence-based and open-ended analysis that may have reached the conclusion that such interventions were ineffective or even detrimental to development and therefore not to be recommended.

Now, some could argue that if the purpose of the consultancy project is to provide real, practical insights into how the development industry works, then students might as well familiarize themselves with its realities, including all its problematic aspects. However, I argue against this and believe universities should push back against a ‘de-academization’ and uphold academic standards and ideals as much as possible. How can this be achieved?

In less problematic cases, the problem may be more one of form than substance. Reports in the development sector often adopt a certain style and follow certain conventions. Consultancy project reports are not journal articles, and naturally, the output needs to be more policy-oriented, make relevant recommendations and therefore diverge to some extent from academic writing and presentation conventions. It is therefore not uncommon for a client to provide feedback to the team and ask them, for example, to leave out or substantially cut literature and theory sections. A solution we sometimes adopted was for teams to submit the full report to the university, whereas the client would receive a slightly shorter, edited version.

In other instances, the issue is not so much that the client organization does not want the project to be conducted in a more rigorous way as that it lacks the skills to do so. The ultimate definition of the project, its research design, or methodology are problematic from an academic perspective not because they clash with the organization’s ‘message’ and preferences, but because of limited capacity or because staff in the organization have never challenged established ways of working/doing research. An example could be a small NGO that wants to assess the effectiveness of its activities using a problematic research design. It is understaffed and none of their existing staff has experience in monitoring and evaluation, let alone the latest methodological standards in scientifically determining policy impact and effectiveness. In such cases, student consultants can have an important and positive impact by helping organizations adopt more evidence-based ways of working and should therefore be encouraged to do so.

But if the conflict is real, it is best to advise students to stay firm but polite in discussions with the client and to grant them support if necessary. From personal experience, this usually yields the desired outcome. If not, it may be necessary for department staff to intervene with the client directly. The department should, of course, also establish clarity about the academic standards and requirements of the project up front. To all parties involved, it should be clear that the product delivered is not research assistance but research consultancy, and that the students are advisors, not subordinate employees. In extremis, effectively going against the client’s wishes in such a way always harbours a risk for the organization’s participation in future rounds, but in order to protect scientificity and to keep projects rewarding for students, this should be a risk worth taking.

VI. Challenges to Fairness

The introduction of the external client into the educational relationship also raises potential equity issues. Fairness and equality are core principles of student assessment. Of course, any kind of teaching exercise that assigns different questions to different students introduces the risk of students dealing with questions of varying complexity and difficulty. Its nature as a group exercise also poses the common challenge of accurately assessing individual performance, though as this is not specific to consultancies, it will not be covered in detail in this article. ⁷

The presence of the client introduces an additional layer of inequality because not only are topics or questions different, every client is different, and therefore, students’ experiences in terms of their client’s responsiveness, support, guidance, etc., can also diverge in non-negligible ways. Indeed, the success of the project is to some extent influenced by how well the client’s definition or design of the project, namely what it wants students to do, aligns with the criteria of academic success. One could, for instance, argue that a project that is highly analytical on a very topical and understudied problem, calling for sophisticated or fashionable methods—say, a difference-in-differences analysis of government policies against deforestation by small-holder farmers—would perhaps be better placed to yield an excellent report than an extended review of the literature on, say, the effectiveness of educational reform.

Furthermore, clients can provide consultant teams with different levels of resources. Some may open their entire internal document archives, provide easy access to numerous key informants, or hand over high-quality data sets they have compiled. For example, the aforementioned study on deforestation could come with access to exclusive satellite imagery, whereas other organizations could have little to offer to students beyond the research topic. This, of course, does not mean that primary data collection or analysis of good secondary material is impossible, but if some teams are given the data while others must look for it or collect it, then this likely introduces a degree of unfairness.

Client organizations’ reliability and their responsiveness to student communications and requests may also vary quite considerably. A team may face difficulties if resources are not delivered as promised or if clients are unresponsive for extended periods of time. Out of roughly 20 teams per year, I estimate that at least one or two teams per year face difficulties, often because initial points of contact on the client side have changed or because the client overestimated its ability to provide access to data (e.g., interviewees, etc.).

Addressing these potential additional sources of unfairness is a challenging task and, realistically, an objective that is difficult to attain fully. Nonetheless, several options exist. First, a thorough pre-screening of the projects by the teaching staff is necessary to ensure that the project is in line with academic objectives and requirements and that it has the potential to yield an excellent report. Second, it is crucial to clearly communicate to client organizations the need for a minimum level of availability during specific key periods of the project cycle. Third, students too need to be made aware of the fact that different levels of client involvement exist and encouraged to come up with contingency plans. Fourth and finally, teaching staff can attempt to evaluate the quality of the client’s collaboration, or at least seek to identify teams that were disadvantaged by no fault of their own. Discussions with team coaches, logbooks or student diaries can all provide evidence in that regard. However, the use of such ‘data points’ is itself fraught with complexity and opportunities for bias.

This leads us to a general problem that the introduction of external organizations into the teaching relationship creates: should the university give clients a role in marking and/or take into account the clients’ satisfaction with the project? It is indeed entirely conceivable to give client representatives, for example, during the presentation of the final report, an opportunity to partake in the discussion of the mark. It would also be feasible to have clients complete a feedback form or a survey evaluating their satisfaction and the utility of the report for their organization, as some MPA capstone projects are doing (Ahmed, 2015; Allard and Straussman, 2003).

Despite these possibilities, I guard against any client involvement in marking. Marking remains one of the most ‘sovereign’ of competencies of universities, requiring knowledge of the university’s standards as well as sufficient academic training. Perhaps more importantly, including a mark component given by the client would, in all likelihood, not accurately measure the performance of the group, but rather reflect the proximity and quality of the relationship between the client and the team, or the extent to which they agree with the report’s findings.

To be sure, none of the aforementioned interventions or corrections will completely eliminate the fact that projects are fundamentally different, and as such, full equality among teams is simply impossible to achieve. However, the proposed steps can help mitigate them and ensure that all projects have the potential to produce excellent final reports and presentations.

VII. Challenges to Ethics

In this section, I reflect on the potential ethical and political implications of relying on consultancy projects in development. As these issues relate to the broader political economy of both development assistance and higher education, they have largely been ignored by research in pedagogy, much of which is focused on projects’ effectiveness as a teaching device. I will consider three major issues that I believe arise most prominently from the use of consultancy projects: (a) whether or not consultancies should be pro bono in the context of a tight labour market and organizations competing globally for scarce resources; (b) reputational risks incurred by all three parties; and (c) how consultancy projects currently relate to broader inequalities within the development sector and higher education.

First, the question of whether or not the consultancy should be paid is difficult to answer, as all scenarios come with some drawbacks. Unfortunately, the literature on consultancy projects in other disciplines is silent on the implications of going for either option (Ahmed, 2015; Allard and Straussman, 2003; Ardley and Taylor, 2010; Camill and Phillips, 2011). Both appear to be practiced, albeit with a clear preference for consultancy and live capstone projects to be free of charge. Let us first consider paid consultancies. The advantages would be clear: either the students or the universities, or both, would be compensated for the work they carry out. A positive effect of this—in addition to the income earned—would be that it would prevent pro bono consultancy projects from creating unfair competition in an already tight job market, in which graduates struggle to find decently paid, permanent jobs (Tomlinson, 2008).

The obvious downside of this is that, in such a scenario, consultancy projects would become much less attractive for clients. Collaborating with the team of student consultants does typically entail spending some staff resources on briefing, advising and communicating with the consultants. Most organizations make the strategic calculation that when consultancies are free, this effort is worthwhile. If this were not the case, many—in particular smaller ones or those based in the Global South—would presumably reconsider. Keeping consultancy projects free of charge or adopting a system in which only organizations from the Global North would have to pay seems to be a better course of action.

Furthermore, the argument about unfair competition assumes that student consultancies are in direct competition with other development consultancy firms, or that client organizations would hire full- or part-time staff to work on the same topic if it weren’t for free student labour. Verifying these claims is difficult and beyond the scope of this article, but in any case, it is not clear whether students would really benefit from paid consultancy projects. If they were paid, the university could conceivably pocket most, if not all, of the receipts due to the students’ structurally weak negotiating position. Furthermore, introducing money into the equation can create relationships of dependence between the university and external organizations (Geuna, 2016; Slaughter et al., 2004). Implicit or explicit pressures to produce certain types of findings could be exerted on the consultants, and the diversity of projects could decline as universities might end up prioritizing clients that pay the most. In this sense, the pro bono nature of consultancy projects may actually protect academic freedom and independence.

Second, consultancy projects bring with them a number of potential reputational risks for all parties. One stems from misbehaving clients. The latter benefit from the consultancy projects not only by sourcing expertise and labour at no or only little cost, they also gain from the prestige and the academic ‘stamp of approval’ that comes with having a report written that has the university’s logo on it. Clients may misrepresent the nature of the exercise, the degree of involvement of the university, or indeed, their own involvement. Clients can, for example, attempt to portray the consultancy project as a ‘neutral’ study conducted by academics at a university in public communications or in a published version of the final report. Or they can, on the contrary, attempt to conceal their involvement in the project.

In addition, students may harm the reputation of clients or the university. Students come with various amounts of experience, and the allocation of teams happens early in the academic year when the teaching staff has had little interaction with the students. It can therefore happen that a team is composed of a mix of inexperienced and weaker students. Some teams could therefore damage the university’s reputation, for example, by communicating in unprofessional ways with the client organization or other interlocutors. In projects involving politically, socially, or culturally sensitive topics, students may also be unaware of the consequences of their words or actions and could end up causing serious incidents with clients or interlocutors, which include governmental or international organizations. Another major way in which students can cause reputational damage is through plagiarism. The image of both the client and the university could indeed be tarnished—not to mention possible legal action in cases of copyright infringement—if it were to become known that students had plagiarized others’ work.

But students also stand to lose. They choose to do this exercise in no small part because of the value of putting the client’s name on their CV. And although there is no reason to believe that the development industry is ‘dirtier’ or more prone to misbehaviour than any other sector of public or economic life, it is, of course, not free from it. If a client—even if it is not the department/division or direct point of contact—then faces a scandal comparable to the one involving, for example, Oxfam in 2018, this could end up depriving students of the opportunity to capitalize on their work and their achievements. ⁸

What can be done to mitigate these various reputational risks? To begin with, it is crucial to deliver teaching early in the year covering the principles of research ethics and encouraging students to not partake in any client actions that are in contravention of these principles and to report them to their teachers. Clients, on the other hand, need to be informed that the consultancy projects have to abide by the principles of ethical research and be encouraged to raise any potential issues with the university staff. Furthermore, students need to be reminded of the importance of professional behaviour as they are effectively ambassadors for both the client and the university. Next, a rigorous anti-plagiarism framework equipped to detect and sanction plagiarism needs to be in place. Last, the degree programme will need to define a clear policy on intellectual property rights, publishing and branding.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the question of how consultancy projects and their concrete, real-life execution relate to the dynamics of power and inequality in higher education and development needs to be examined (Pettit, 2006). To begin with, there is the question of which clients and which universities ‘get to’ benefit from the projects. For universities, what is at stake is not only the prestige associated with working with high-profile organizations but also, crucially, the intake numbers of students paying sometimes considerable tuition fees, which affects the financial viability of entire programmes, departments and universities. Although hard data on this does not exist, student feedback from my programme suggests that consultancy projects are an important determinant in choosing a degree that offers them. By itself, this tells us nothing about how attractive programmes or departments would be in the absence of offering consultancy projects. However, if we take into account broader trends of the neoliberalization of higher education, the development industry and its labour market, and perhaps most importantly, the concern over ‘employability’(Courtois, 2019; McCowan, 2015; Prokou, 2008; Tomlinson, 2008), there are reasons to believe that a degree offering consultancy projects would be more popular than one that does not.

Based on this assumption, could the use of this teaching device therefore be a way for higher education institutions that are not among the wealthiest and most ‘prestigious’ Anglo-American universities to better compete for students, and thereby help reduce inequalities between universities, for example between those in the Global North and those in the Global South? Now, at a time in which the use of this teaching device is still relatively limited in international development degrees, this is perhaps still a possibility. And universities in the Global South could even leverage the further normalization of remote working in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to position themselves and their students as actors with deep local knowledge and launch consultancy project modules of their own.

However, from a more pessimistic perspective, one could also argue that the use of consultancy projects could cement structural inequalities in a neoliberalized higher education sector in which, as a consequence of the disengagement of the state, universities are coerced into operating as market actors, strongly advantaging the wealthiest and most prestigious universities (Davies and Zarifa, 2012). This is because clients also seek the prestige of cooperating with well-known universities. In my experience, it is therefore more plausible that the use of consultancy projects by high-ranked, wealthy universities further strengthens their position vis-à-vis their lower-ranked competitors when it comes to attracting high-achieving students to costly degree programmes.

The question of which client organizations get to benefit from the consultancy projects is perhaps even more problematic. Consultancy projects result in the distribution of resources (expertise, free/cost-effective labour and prestige) from the university to selected organizations. In doing so, universities intervene in a ‘free market’ of competing development organizations, which are, as I explained above, not only motivated by impact but also by survival and growth, and which are more or less effective at creating impact. In other words, there are without a doubt ‘better’ and ‘worse’ client organizations. In practice, however, it is quite difficult for individual teachers, perhaps even for departments and universities, to determine ‘how much good’, if any, an organization is doing. What yardstick should be used? Based on which data and evidence? Grounded in which principles? Perhaps as a consequence of the perceived subjectivity of any attempt to address this issue, consultancy projects are currently mainly selected based on other criteria. This, of course, does not mean that there are no ethical ‘red lines’. One project proposal, for instance, wanted to enlist student consultants to work on finding ways to turn a not-for-profit school into a profitable private school. But when things are more nuanced, say when there may be choices between supporting a large UN agency or a smaller local NGO, with both working on the same issue, we are often still unable to give clear answers.

Such inequalities between organizations in the development industry not only run along the dimensions of size or political power, but also along the country and region of origin. Organizations in the Global North have much more power, funds and influence than their peers in the Global South. As things currently stand, client organizations in consultancy projects still largely hail from the Global North, even if teams also often work with their local chapters or partners. Part of this is a reflection of student demand, including from students originally from the Global South, for ‘high-profile’ clients for which they hope to work one day. But it is also a consequence of the structural problems of the industry and the nature of professional networks of academics at Anglo-American universities and development studies departments still dominated by Western scholars.

Moreover, it is not clear whether we teach students to challenge these inequalities, and the broader nature of the ‘industry’, or whether we encourage their acceptance. To give one example, a team once gave a presentation about their consultancy project, which revolved around exploring new partnership opportunities with the private sector for the organization, with the aim to improve impact, but also to get a better sense of what their ‘competitors’ do, in order to adapt, and presumably, outcompete them. After the workshop was over, a more idealistic student came to see me, surprised by this state of affairs and questioning why the client organization was focused on how it could catch up with its ‘rivals’ instead of being happy that other organizations were succeeding in achieving a common objective. The student asked whether in development we have a commitment to the cause rather than pure organizational success. Again, one could argue that during such a degree, students get exposure to the problematic aspects of the industry and therefore get to make more informed decisions about whether they want to join it. Nevertheless, the point the student raised has merits: Is it a department’s job to fuel potentially excessive competitiveness, inefficiencies and waste of collective efforts? On behalf of which organizations does the department intervene? Should universities simply acknowledge and accept problematic aspects of the industry as they currently exist?

Programmes are not powerless in this respect, and the project selection process becomes all the more important. If there are sufficient project submissions by clients, teaching staff have the power to prioritize certain organizations over others. Here, I believe there is an opportunity for consultancy projects to play a more transformative role, in particular with regards to growing calls for decolonization and addressing inequality between the Global North and South. A proactive policy of advertising and acquiring projects can help channel manpower and brainpower to organizations in the Global South that may not otherwise have the resources to acquire them externally, supporting actors who often have better knowledge and longer experience working in the countries in which they are active. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that distance need not be an obstacle, and that digital tools can be harnessed for remote communication, learning and working.

In theory, it is entirely conceivable to create a consultancy project module in which all client organizations are small- or medium-sized organizations based in the Global South. However, my experience suggests that department leadership and programme teaching staff face competing incentives in this respect. A strategy of prioritizing smaller, lesser-known clients would be at odds with satisfying the strong student demand to work for large, well-known clients. Compromise solutions may therefore involve the inclusion of major client organizations whilst encouraging students to avoid expressing their preferences for their project based on client ‘name’ alone.

Of course, in order for departments and teachers to have as much leeway as possible to make these choices and steer consultancy projects in this direction, it is important to continuously expand the client database.

VIII. Conclusion

Consultancy projects are an increasingly common feature of development studies programmes. Not only because their introduction corresponds to macro-level trends in higher education that are unlikely to be reversed any time soon, but also because they are generally good at achieving their pedagogical objectives. In a crowded, hyper-competitive and globalized labour market, students are pressured to pay increasing attention to their ‘employability’, and therefore value an opportunity to gain practical work experience with a client organization from the development sector. However, despite the projects’ popularity—or perhaps because of it—teachers and universities have not spent much time reflecting on the wider implications of using this teaching device for how development studies are taught and how, as an academic discipline, it relates to the professional ‘industry’ in the ‘real world’.

My position is broadly sympathetic to, and in many ways in line with, critiques such as the one formulated by Denskus and Esser, who take strong issue with the trend towards ‘professionalization’, labelling it a ‘vocationalization’ of international development studies (Denskus and Esser, 2015). However, this article adopted a somewhat more pragmatic approach, in that it aimed to think critically but constructively about ways to mitigate some of the problematic aspects of the growing presence—in this context, quite literally—of external/third party actors in university life. Furthermore, I showed that the challenges posed by these teaching trends in fact go beyond questions of an improper balance in favour of practice at the expense of theory, or even of a more or less critical stance towards development as a field or industry. There are numerous and complex challenges to scientificity, fairness and ethics those universities, departments and teachers have to seriously consider, and this article aimed to discuss the pros and cons of various courses of action.

A perhaps more positive implication of this article is that the use of consultancy projects in development studies degrees could, under certain circumstances, be leveraged to help address North-South power imbalances and decolonization. Since consultancy projects were often executed remotely before the pandemic, and this trend has been amplified by the pandemic, this teaching device could become a tool for greater North–South and South–South collaboration: Universities in the Global South could prominently showcase the expertise and talent of their students by providing policy-relevant research outputs to both domestic and international organizations, whereas universities in the Global North could prioritize working with clients and universities in the Global South.

There are numerous opportunities for future scholarship to provide us with further evidence on the consequences of using various forms of consultancy projects. On a more pedagogical level, the implementation of a randomized-controlled trial or the use of other monitoring and evaluation methods could tell us more about learning outcomes, student satisfaction and career prospects. On a more political level, ethnographic research could probe more deeply the dynamics of thinking and decision-making among both the university/departmental leadership and the client organizations from the development sector, to help us further improve our understanding of the trends in academia and the practitioner world outlined at the beginning of the article.