This week I describe my courses at NHH. I have 4 courses this semester: Economic crime, Purchasing strategy and supply chain management, Organizational theory and Frontiers of business ethics.

In economic crime: prevention and detection, we study white collar crime, mafias and gang’s economy. For example, my first and second assignment was on HSBC and money laundering system. This course is interesting, the teacher use a lot of relevant data concerning mafia, drug and crime. Here, the grade scale is from A to F for evaluations.

Secondly, purchasing strategy and supply chain management is based on theory. We talk about outsourcing, transaction cost or relation between business to business. I already made two group work with a French girl and three friendly girls from Japan. The big one was about BOSE, the American Hi-Fi company.

Now the course which is occurred in AUD MAX (cf picture in previous article): Organizational theory. This course is quiet interesting; we had guest lecture with important managers like chief manager of Oracle, Norway. In this course we have 3 assignments and 3 oral presentations per group plus a final exman. We already made two. Organizational theory is the most demanding course. For each assignment, we need to analyze a firm and make 8 pages. We choose Norwegian Air Shuttle with my group (2 guys from Norway and me). We have one week to make a draft version and send to the teacher assistant. After a couple of day, we receive a feedback and have a few days left to send the final version. I like the principal of draft. Thanks to feedback you can exchange with teacher and understand your faults before the final submission. Second point, for each homework, a presentation of 10 minutes is required, they called this session “seminar”. Just one person of the team presents the work during an oral presentation. I did it last week. My subject was: external environment of Norwegian. For this, there is no precise grade, it’s pass or no pass. If your work is not acceptable, you have a second chance to resubmit and remake an oral presentation. Hopefully, it wasn’t my case!

I conclude this article by my favorite: Frontiers of business Ethics. Our teacher, Knut J. Ims, is an old and very peaceful person. After a lecture of 3hours, you have the same feeling than after a yoga session. We are talking about moral choices, philosophy or environment. Each lecture begins by a song, such as Beethoven or Pharrell Williams with happy, and ended by clapping from the teacher and from the students.

This paragraph concludes my weekly article.

Have a good week 🙂

pcottier

This article is a little introduction of Erasmus’ schedule. Next week I will present my courses more precisely!

I arrived in Bergen on the 11^th of August. From 15^th to 21^th the international committee, a student association, organized an amazing welcome week with many activities.

Courses began the week after, on Monday 22^th. Furthermore, at the end of the semester, there is an exam period which depend on your courses. For me, my first written exam will be on the 11th of November. My last exam will be the 6th of December with organizational theory. Some students can finish the semester at the end of November.

So personally I have 4 different courses, each courses give 7,5 ECTS credits and 30 ECTS is needed to pass. I have 15hours of lectures per week. If you plan to go abroad and make an exchange semester or year, it’s a valuable point to take into account. Each school can choose how much ECTS a course will give you. A course can give you roughly from 3 ECTS to 10 ECTS. We basically can think, less courses you have, less work you need to make. But it’s not true.

Some Erasmus’ student need to work hard and some other less 🙂 In my case, I have classes every day except on Tuesday. One of my roommates, Nassim, finish his class week on Wednesday and the other, Savvas doesn’t have free week days. Nassim’s French business school ask for 20 ECTS for the semester, compared to 30 ECTS for most of the people. Last June I has been in Croatia to visit a friend of mine whom is in Erasmus too. He has courses 3 days per week and no homework at all. In the UK a friend has 3 different courses and another in Spain has 6. So, it depend a lot. According to several testimonies, is more simple to have your degree in eastern Europe than in the United Kingdom or Scandinavia. I think it is depending of school reputation and requirement.

In my opinion, next point can make a big difference regarding how much you need to be involved in your courses to pass. In some schools you are mix with local students. It is the case at NHH, we have an important proportion of Norwegians in our class. It’s perfect to discover new people and talk with them. I have a teamwork with two Norwegians in Organizational theory. In this situation you are just “regular” student. But in some other schools, courses are made only for exchange students and teachers can be less demanding. It was the case for Florian, a friend of mine whom went to Riga, Latvia.

At NHH, there are not tutorial sessions, “Travaux dirigés” in French. All my courses occur in amphitheater. We are 200 students maximum, in Organizational theory, in this auditorium.

Above, you can see a picture of Aud MAX the biggest auditorium in NHH. There are 7 screens and many speakers, it’s impressive. Nevertheless, in each courses we have assignments during the semester plus a final exam at the end. 2 or 3 assistants (PhD students or master students) help our teachers.

Bye ! 🙂

pcottier

The Kingdom of Norway is one of the 3 Scandinavian countries. Harald V is the actual king and the prime minister, a woman, is Erna Solberg. 5.2 million people live here and 16% of them are immigrants. The main language is Norwegian, but there are two different dialects: Bokmål and Nynorsk.

Norwegian currency is Norwegian Krone (NOK). With 1€ you have currently 9NOK. It’s a rich country due to many powerful economics sectors. Nevertheless, cost of living here is really high, one of the higher in the whole world. The GDP per capita is $70 000 so wages following cost of living. It’s just expansive for foreigners.

Considering welfare and wellbeing rate Norway is well now because of his high HDI: 0,944, first rank in the world. Norway also reach the first place of the OECD Better Life Index, Legatum Prosperity Index, Democracy Index and the Inequality Adjusted Human Development Index!

Oslo is the capital, with 658 000 capita. The second largest city is Bergen, with 250 000 people. It’s roughly the same numbers of inhabitants in Nantes! But Bergen is less concentrate than the French city. I’m currently living and studying in this wonderful city. So, Bergen is located in Hordaland, one of the 19 administrative regions called counties. We can see the flag of the county on children’s scholar bag.

Bergen’s surname is: The city of rain. The annual average of rain is about 2 250mm. Compared to Brest (France), there are “just’’ 900mm each year! But for the moment, we are at the end of September and I use less than ten time my umbrella in one mouth and half, so we are pretty lucky.

Bergen is surrounded by 7 mountains, and here, the purpose of many students is to climb each one. I live next to Damsgårdsfjellet, in the district of Melkeplassen, the milk place in Norwegian. Below a picture of my house! I live with one French guy and one Greek. They studied at NHH too.

My home is located in Melkeplassen, next to forest and mountains.

Another important fact about geography are Fjords. Fjords are according to dictionary.com “A long, narrow arm of the sea bordered by steep cliffs: usually formed by glacial erosion.” Many touristic trips by boat, cars or even hiking try to reach the top of Fjords. The most famous one is Trolltunga, you can check it out on internet. These hiking are not so easy and at the school they tell to us: Be caution! Each year many tourists can not reach the top and people need to call emergency.

The city center is quite large. You can walk along the Norh Sea, there is a huge harbor where many ocean liners stop. If you can make a cruise in the fjord you will see amazing landscape, mountains, and houses in the middle of nowhere. During the welcome week, the International committee of NHH, a kind of ‘’BDE’’ just for international students organised one. It was marvelous.

The two most touristic places in Bergen are the fish market and Bryggen. In the fish market you can have a plate of salmon or other fishes for 250-300NOK, so nearly 30€.

Bryggen is on the UNESCO list for cultural heritage, it’s a series of typical houses. Most of them are now restaurants or commercial shops for tourists.

I will finish this first article by a culture aspect of the city. Bergen is the capital of street art in Norway. You can admire many piece in the city. One of the most famous artist here is Dolk. The city wants to preserve his piece of art by protective glass. The famous street artist Banksy come to Bergen too!

That all for the moment! See you 🙂

pcottier