Postgraduate students have long provided paid services to corporate clients. But over the past decade or so, undergraduate “consulting clubs” have proliferated. The idea is to band together and offer to do work for firms for a fraction of the cost of hiring regular consultants, and in the process learn a lot about business. Like real consultants, they pitch for clients, cold-calling or emailing.
Students quickly adopt the jargon of the industry they are aping, appointing themselves “project managers”, gathering information from “subject-matter experts” and, at the end, producing “deliverables” for clients: typically in the form of slide presentations. Work is carried out under legally enforceable non-disclosure agreements. All this is done alongside normal studies.
Why devote a chunk of precious undergraduate years to this? The students defend it creditably. Ms Koullick joined as a way to make friends at a time when a normal university experience was impossible because of covid-19. “It was a big family of folk to spend time with,” she says. Mr Singh points out that the fees his group earns pay for great parties. Both extol the benefits of being able to experiment with different types of work before they commit to a career.
There are potential financial rewards, too. Clubs provide a fast track to well-paid jobs later. John Paul Rollert, an academic at the Booth Business School at the University of Chicago, notes that uninhibited ambition in America’s youth is not new: “These kids are going to make a fortune,” he says.