Today our group travelled to the University of Amsterdam’s business school for a tour. When I first saw this on the schedule, I was unsure of how much I would learn from this visit, being an engineer. However, there were many things that was able to learn from going to the business school. Firstly, our tour guide described to us the severity of the housing shortage in Amsterdam. He described how he could not find a place to live his second year, so he had to commute all the way from Germany. I also learned about the tuition at the university. The tuition for out of country students is 10,000 dollars per year whereas the tuition for in country students is around five thousand dollars a year. These prices are extremely cheap, and the college is very easy to get into, however the curriculum is extremely difficult. Our tour guide described how half of his freshman year class failed out or dropped out his first year. This is extremely different to college in the United States. In the US, tuition is much more expensive and the classes at least for business students are far easier. However, one thing that did seem similar to American college is the structure of the curriculum. Each class has a lecture section, and a smaller recitation section. For most classes at the University of Pittsburgh this structure is the same. Through the comparison to US colleges, I was able to learn a lot about the life of a college student in Amsterdam.
The second part of our day saw us travel to the center of Amsterdam for a canal cruise. I was extremely excited for this activity at the start of the trip. Ever since we arrived in Amsterdam, I saw the boats going through the canals on tours and always wanted to try it. The cruise itself completely lived up to the expectation. Throughout the cruise I constantly thought of how short the chain of concept to customer was for the canal cruise service. The company is essentially delivering the concept directly to the customer without influence or input from any other companies or places. Therefore, it ended up being extremely difficult for me to imagine the concept to customer idea throughout the cruise.