Bachelor International Business

Business challenges

In level 1 and 2 of the programme you'll work on real business assignments from real businesses and organisations. You will tackle these business challenges individually or in teams with students from all study years. Whether you're developing marketing strategies for a Spanish real estate company or addressing logistics for a tech start-up, these tasks are more than exercises—they're opportunities to challenge yourself and make a tangible impact in the real business world. Each challenge you tackle contributes to a growing portfolio that showcases your skills and achievements.

Of course, it won't always be easy. Sometimes you'll hit a roadblock, and other times you'll come up with brilliant ideas. At all of these moment you’ll ask for feedback. From the coaches or business experts within the study programme, but also from your fellow students or from your clients. Feedback will help you grow. Making mistakes is part of the learning process as each error provides valuable lessons that help you grow and improve. It will allow you to develop resilience and gain insights that lead to success.

You'll also learn a lot from collaborating in your groups, with each student bringing his or her unique perspective to solve a business challenge. We work in vertical communities with students from all levels of the study programme collaborating in projects. Additionally, you'll learn to take charge. Here, you decide what you want to learn, how, and where. This independent and proactive approach is crucial for your future.

International internship

During your second or third year, you will go abroad for a five-month internship in an international company. You will be working and living abroad, to experience a different work environment and to gain international work experience.

Free study space

During the one semester, you can pick one of the following options:

• International study abroad

International Business is part of an extensive international network and has over 100 partner universities worldwide. During this study exchange, you will take courses on subjects that fit into your programme and specialization, taught in English or in your second language. This study abroad semester can greatly contribute to the development of your international orientation. You can study abroad without paying extra tuition fees to a foreign university.

• Minor

If you decide not to go on exchange, you can expand your knowledge by attending a minor in a field of business you are interested in, at International Business, at another Zuyd study programme or even at another university of applied sciences in the Netherlands.

• Pre-master

A special minor is a pre-master at Maastricht University. If you would like to continue in a master’s degree programme in International Business after your graduation, doing the pre-master at Maastricht University for one semester is an interesting option for you. This pre-master will deepen your knowledge on subjects such as finance and accounting and will focus on acquiring the high-level research skills required for an academic master. After completion of the pre-master and the graduation in your bachelor’s degree programme, you can get access to the one-year master’s programme without doing an intermediate year.

Graduation phase

To set the direction to your future career and to comply with your field of interest and ambitions, you specialise in :

• Strategic Management

You will learn how to set up the internal organization of a company by means of assignments such as how to design or apply a change management model based on a newly developed strategy, or how to design and apply a model regarding innovation.

• Marketing and Sales

You will learn how to find new attractive international markets and how to enter them to introduce your products or services. You will write and implement an export plan, an acquisition plan, a customer satisfaction plan, a sales plan, and so on.

• Finance

You will learn how to financially stabilize your organization and to advice on financial issues when doing business abroad. You will learn for example how to design and execute a cost price analysis, to write and implement an advisory report regarding foreign currency policy or to develop a financial and legal structure to work with staff abroad.

• Supply Chain Management

You will learn how to prepare the logistic related departments of an organization and how the entire supply chain in an organization must be adapted to do business abroad successfully. You will, for example, develop and implement a system for incoming goods control, design and implement a vendor selection system for SMEs, write and implement a plan to reduce the supplier database for SME’s, etc.

Graduation internship

In the last semester, you will do an internship which consists of real work activity participation on behalf of a company or organization and a real-life company assignment. The proportion of real work participation and research assignment (the basis for thesis) is 50%-50% in an optimum situation. Based on the research done during this internship, you will write a thesis to complete your study programme.

Career prospects

In this International Business programme, you will be trained for a wide range of management positions in the fields of Commerce, Finance, and Organization. As a result, you will have excellent job opportunities on the national and international labour markets, such as:

• International Account Manager
• Marketing Manager
• Financial Manager/Financial Analyst
• Business Analyst
• Sales Manager
• Customer Relationship Manager
• PR Officer/Trade Consultant
• Export Manager
• Logistics Manager
• Supply Chain Manager

All these positions feature international contacts that are to be maintained and which require a sound insight into economic and legal issues as well as intercultural and language skills.