The Hague University (HHS)

I am enroled in a course named International Business Management Studies - the requirements are slightly different from my home university as you have to do a lot of presentations, group work and report writing. Courses are generally not very difficult but possibly time-consuming.

In the beginning it might be difficult and confusing for exchange students to make their timetables. More help and support could be offered in this area.

Well, what can I say. I was to naive/ignorant when I came to The Hague, believing that the Hogeschool or the Law program would actually benefit and/or make something out of being situated in the city of "peace and justice", because, they are not. Again, I found it to be a very entrepreneurial scheme like thing, working to attract morons like me to The Hague and into the hands of "teachers", thats right not "professors", not even "phd" holders,... "teachers" - you will have people with dutch bachelor degrees and some with international LLM degrees, who have been ejected or rather excreted from the lawyering market and now have decided to go into teaching. Since De Haagse Hogeschool is -according to dutch law and in comparison to any other countries standards- is not a university, anyone can start teaching there -when I finish my bachelor, I can go there and "teach", building my"career" from there. Anyhow, other problems are the extremely low requirements for passing a subject in the dutch education system in general, but at the Hogeschool, you could read over your material the day before an exam or else and be top of the class, which quite often isn't even necessary, because the teachers give you their power point presentations used throughout the course, and more than often, you will find that, because the teachers don't actually know their subjects, you will get a better grade by just learning the answers provided in this pp.'s. Quite often then everybody gets a 9 or 8 out of 10. Another problem is the student body: Prepare to be with ONLY eastern europeans AND asylum seekers from third world countries, which was an experience that I liked, but you know, for your study that does actually suck very, very hard.

Well, anything I said above, just remember, regardless of whether your an exchange student or a full-time student, it's incredibly easy. Oh, I just remembered how bad the teachers command of english was, even if they manage to speak it quite fluently -in the netherlands movies and tv shows, don't get their own voice-over, so everyone can understand/speak basic english- so, even if they manage to speak it fluently, the ppt's, exam questions etc. etc. pp. are littered with errors of all kinds, really all kinds, so much so that at times you really don't know what you have been asked to do, i.e. you have to first get into the mind of the teacher and what he probably wanted to say, but in a multiple choice exam, which every exam in every hogeschool consists of to a varying degree, but at least 50%, you have massive problems, because you'll find that depending on what the teacher meant there are multiple answers... It is freakin hell, i tell you - you want to kill yourself for being so dumb and going to the netherlands

the courses are short, so no matter what you won't learn much.

It is good in the sense that you really can party while you are there and not do work, it is bad in the sense that if you do want to learn, it may be hard to because you are given everything hands-on but you learn to bullshit because you have no clue what you are doing!

Very practical! I'd like more focus on quantitative subjects. It's very easy to stop by professors' offices and talk. Interaction with locals - mostly with the ones who study at international programs as well, not so much other departments

We'd like more assistance in finding the field summer project

I have no complaints about the content of the course I am studying, however, the time table is not exchange student friendly - it changes often and without notice.

Almost every course in the IBMS programme includes some component of group work so make sure you pick a good group from the beginning.

Students will have a wide choice of subjects from where they can choose. They can be helpt by some already-appointed supervisors.

I find that Dutch system very practical and flexible. Moreover, the facilities are amazing and almost all people here speak English. Improvement are to be made in the way the classes are taught since the lecturer is rather an initiator. Most 'internationals' are surprised when class lasts about 30 mn and the lecturer is only supervising teh assignment and giving 'tips'.