European Union Policy

European Union Policy

The minor European Union Policy or EUP is a minor program provided by the ASIS School of international business on the Avans University of applied sciences in Breda. It’s offered to third year students and coordinated by Mr. J. Frencken. After almost having completed the minor, I can say that it is an interesting, well structured and organized minor. To support these words I will give a brief overview of the strong and less strong points of this minor. After this, I will give a general conclusion with some recommendations.

Strong points:
One of the strongest points of this minor is the way it is organised. Compared with other block I’ve studied as a student at the Avans University of applied sciences, this has by far been the best organized block. Assignments are clear, schedules are clear, the order of assignments and topics is logical and most importantly, the teachers and coordinator are well prepared. If there, for any reason, is a shift in the schedule or assignments this is well communicated and acted upon so only a few to none misunderstandings might occur. The structure is consistent so everybody knows what is expected from them. All documents are published on bb and teachers are open for questions any time so it is easy to keep up even if you have been ill for a while. Moreover, most assignments were interesting and relevant to the topics of that week. Another thing what I really like about this minor is the fact that assignments are in sometimes to be completed in groups and sometimes individually. This gives the students some alternation. Of course, some subject is more interesting then another but this is something that will always happen and it is greatly dependent on personal opinions.

Less strong points:
What I personally don’t really like in this minor is the fact that you are required to read very much. So in other words, it is rather theoretical with in overload of information that needs to be processed. Again, this is a really personal opinion. Something else that could be improved in my opinion is the amount of lessons. In this minor, very few lessons and training sessions are scheduled and students are supposed to do a lot of self study. Although, I do think that self study is a good thing, it could be a little less. The additional interactive time with teachers I’m talking about, should in my opinion be spend on extra training sessions. This makes it easier for students to understand specific topics, especially very complicated ones. The third and last thing that could have been done better in a different way is the English course. In stead of in the second part of the minor, it might be better to place this in the first part. In the first part students are less busy so they have more time for English. In the second part students also need to write a paper so if you include English in this part, it becomes really busy in the second part of the minor.

The overall assessment of this minor would definitely end up in a sufficient mark. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give it an 8. To score even higher, more lessons should be implemented and either the paper or the English course should be replaced to the first part of the minor.