“It is really important these days to give students some international experience”

The Institute of Business Economics was founded barely two years ago and its first students have not finished their first year yet. Why did you think it important to launch a summer university so early?

For two reasons. One is that we already have the resources. We offer over 50% of our undergraduate courses also in English. One of our BA programs, International Economics and Business is taught exclusively in English. This program as well as Finance and Accounting will be open for international students from this fall. The second one is that we promised our prospective students from the very start that we’re going to have an international summer university. It is really important these days to give students some international experience, for they may end up working in another country in a couple of years. And even though we already have more than thirty Erasmus partners, not all of our students can organize to spend a whole semester abroad.

How did you decide which courses to run? 

It would be nice to say that we followed some well-thought out strategy but we didn’t. We asked the faculty members who were available what they wanted to teach, the condition being that they should be something at least slightly different from what they do in their regular classes, and then we surveyed our students which courses they liked most. There was a course we simply found. Professor Alain De Beuckelaer, who a member of our marketing department is connected to, said he would be interested in teaching a course that is quite unique, and we gladly accepted his offer. So now we have quite diverse courses – some cover pretty standard material, others take a more distinctive approach.

How many international students do you expect?

It’s too early to say. Ideally, about half of the students in each course should come from abroad. But this is our first year, and it may take a few years to achieve that.