Academic Differences

Guest Post by: Matthew Richardson, a Foster School of Business student studying Accounting and Finance. In Spring 2019, Mathew participated in the Foster Exchange Program at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

I am taking four classes at Erasmus University all within their International Business Bachelor program. Primarily the students are from the Netherlands, but roughly 25% of the students are international students, which has created a diverse background within the classroom setting and group projects.

Erasmus University

Rotterdam Central Station

Additionally, another interesting difference compared to UW is that each class has more than 1 teacher and, in fact, in one of my classes I have 5 teachers! Further, the teachers are more like guest lecturers that come in to lecture in the areas that they specialize in. Most of the lecturers are non-native English speakers so sometimes it is hard to fully understand their English; however, they were all still able to communicate effectively.

Erasmus Bridge

I found the classes to be further oriented towards textbook learning rather than lectures. A significant amount of the information is meant to be learnt outside of class with the lectures there to expand on the more difficult topics. There are significantly fewer amounts of lectures per week compared to UW, which also was nice as it provided freedom for my own schedule. To go along with this, there aren’t any homework assignments and grades were almost solely based on one or two tests. This learning environment allows students to be more independent and proved a unique experience compared to UW.