Measuring the Impact of Higher Education Interventions in Development

Capacity strengthening is important in enabling Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to compete with growing global technological and economic developments. In the agriculture sector, Africa has to be in a position to achieve food and nutritional security and develop robust innovation systems for products appropriate for its use. The need to strengthen capacity has led to numerous programmes employing a variety of models of intervention. Many have appeared to be popular and successful. However, evaluation over the longer-term has proved difficult, with donors being particularly interested in the visible return on their investments. So renewed interest in capacity strengthening for international development has brought with it a debate about how best to monitor and evaluate capacity strengthening, efficiently and effectively. Even though the individual is the direct focus of many interventions, long-term and sustainable capacity strengthening is a complex process dependent on a range of different stakeholders and influencing players, requiring changes in systems and shifts in power relationships. It is not clear how capacity development contributes to international development. While conventional impact evaluations capture the more immediate and practical outcomes of Higher Education investment, there are also societal benefits to Higher Education interventions which relate to social awareness and change, and act over longer time periods. This study examines literature and evidence to understand whether and how HE interventions for development are being evaluated. The work also reflects the evidence for impact. This review highlights successful completion rates for many of the fellowship programmes due in part to rigorous and equitable selection methods. These are the most common programmes to be evaluated. There is evidence that alumni apply what they have learned, participate in the community and more widely through their institutions and through training others. Consortia do play a successful role in mobilising new knowledge and resources and transferring research knowledge skills to others (particularly in developing country partnerships). Thereis growing evidence of a shift towards home grown, local courses, doctoral programmes, leadership and skills and the establishment of centres of excellence. Many members have applied the skills learned and participate at the community level and more widely. There is evidence of successful capacity building in policy, infrastructure and academic support systems as well as institutional benefits in the form of recognition of the value of research and financial benefits in investing in research and incentives to researchers. The work illustrated strong evidence of North-South and South-South collaboration. There was a direct positive contribution to the scientific knowledge base, regional harmonisation, networking and indigenous doctoral programmes. But there appears to be little formal evidence for the development benefits of the three kinds of HE investment mentioned. Further, there are potential negative development effects of HE interventions, including ‘brain drain’ and inequitable, Northern-driven research partnerships. Finally, the internationalisation of universities, developments in ICTs, and private HE provision, particularly may have changed the landscape for HE interventions for development. HE investments still lack a convincing theory of change that will lead to development outcomes and positive societal impacts in different contexts and sectors. The relationship between individuals, institutions and society is poorly understood with much of the emphasis being on outputs and little comparison between different approaches. For all these limitations, there are new and innovative tools being developed and tested for evaluating HE interventions, and considerable potential to adapt and apply a range of new methods and complete analysis of different kinds of interventions from other development areas. These can be built into new interventions from their outset, or used to analyse historical data sets provided by long-running programmes. In conclusion there are lessons learnt from the literature review: • The importance of process; • The need to focus on learning; • The benefits of using several methods; • The need to include stakeholders in inclusive participatory ways, for design, effectiveness, implementation, impact and the coherence and relevance of the programme (duration, location, stakeholder involvement etc);The importance of initiating processes of reflection about assumptions and power; and learning by individuals, their behavioural changes and the contributions to institutional process and thinking including fellow mobility; · Being clear about the definitions of impact, hard vs. Soft skills development objectives, on careers, publications, promotions, behaviours, adoption of outputs, perceptions, citations, grants, fundraising, spin-off; • The need for ARD programmes to understand that different kinds of technologies have different social outcomes and that a technological solution may not be the desired solution every time; • The importance of stakeholder participation and deliberation at several junctures in time and space to build an understanding of complexity in rural social dynamics. Lastly, stakeholder deliberations must reflect on power relations and expose them with an aim to redress them towards real and equitable partnership. All capacity-development interventions are based on theories that are implicit in the minds of those who design and implement the interventions, because there is seldom a consensus among key stakeholders on the programme theory. ALINe’s literature review has highlighted alternative and complementary participatory methods to incorporate notions about complexity and the multi-stakeholder nature of research, and its impacts on social change.