Today, we had no company visits. Instead, we started our day at 10:30 and headed to the Universitiet van Amsterdam, or UvA. To be completely honest, I did not really learn anything related to concept to customer or the supply chain during the visit, but it was still an interesting experience nonetheless. When we arrived on campus, we were met by our tour guide, Aaron, who showed us around the business school at UvA. One thing that Aaron said that I found interesting was the fact that out of country tuition for UvA was only about $12,000, which is only a quarter of Pitt’s out of state tuition. This is very similar to the tuition of VU, which was the university we visited on Monday. Unfortunately, these rates are too good to be true. According to Aaron, it is not difficult to find a student who was not affected by the housing crisis in The Netherlands in some way. Aaron told us how he was not able to find a place to live in Amsterdam for 3 months during his second year, so he had to commute all the way from Germany. Another thing Aaron talked about was the fact that college is much easier to get in here than it is in the US. Again, this does come with a catch, as it is apparently much harder to stay in the program once accepted. Aaron said that his class started off at about 1000 students last year, and now it is down to about 500 students. I wonder whether classes truly are more difficult here, or if the higher acceptance rates invite more students that are unprepared to undertake a college workload.

After the UvA visit, we then went on a canal cruise. It was really nice to explore Amsterdam through the canal, because I had yet to see the city from that perspective. We are getting really close to the end, which is very sad. Nonetheless, I am really excited for the Tony Chocoloney visit tomorrow!