The Advanced Bachelor of International Business Management prepares students who already hold a bachelor’s degree in a variety of disciplines for an international career. Lecturers with extensive professional experience provide hands-on lessons, guest lectures, workshops, and assignments.
They work together as a team to create inspiring cross-disciplinary projects and excursions, all designed to prepare students for an international internship. Throughout the programme, students are encouraged to develop their professional skills and broaden their international perspective.
International Box of Knowledge
In this module, students explore the international dimensions of several key business domains:
- Marketing
- Finance
- Human Resource Management
- Logistics
- Law
Alongside lectures and presentations by international experts, students work with real-life business cases and examples. They develop their project management skills while tackling a range of practical business challenges.
During the Integration Sessions, students can choose from several topics to help them prepare for their international internship and professional career — such as international pricing, sales training, Excell, and AI in business. Students are also invited to propose their own ideas for additional sessions.
Inspiration Days in Rotterdam
During a two-day trip to Rotterdam, students collaborate with teammates and with students from an international partner institution on an international experience assignment. They also explore the city, visiting inspiring companies, urban projects, and the Port of Rotterdam. Transport and hotel accommodation (including breakfast) are included in the tuition fee.
Integrated Business Projects
From November to February, students work for nine weeks on Integrated Business Projects in groups. Partner companies present their projects, and students apply based on their interests, talents, ambitions, and learning goals. This approach enables students to specialize in certain fields while broadening their general management competencies. Within each project group, students take on specific roles that help them deepen their expertise.
Objective: Based on the company’s briefing, students formulate well-founded, practical, and achievable recommendations in the selected business domains. They gain a helicopter view — one of their key assets — and acquire clear insights into international business management and strategic opportunities across different industries.
Project: International Entrepreneurship
This project provides students with insight into international business development and entrepreneurship.
In the first phase, students work on key management competencies such as project management, time management, presentation skills, trends in entrepreneurship and leadership.
In the second phase, students spend one full week working on an entrepreneurial project. Together with peers, they analyze a company and develop a plan to bring a business idea to the international market, considering trend analysis, financial and strategic considerations, and market potential.
Lecturers with real-world business experience guide students through this practical entrepreneurship journey.
International Skills and Language Programme
The programme emphasizes self-directed learning.
Throughout the academic year, students monitor and reflect on their personal development using a competence and language portfolio.
At the start of the year, they assess their existing skills and define individual learning goals. They decide which final competencies they aim to achieve by graduation — effectively becoming managers of their own learning process.
The same principle applies to the language portfolio*. Students improve their proficiency in three foreign languages:
- English (core course)
- French (core course)
- A third language of choice: German or Spanish
Language learning is practical and experience based. Students develop their communication skills in authentic, real-life contexts, for example during an immersion trip to Mons. In this programme, languages are not treated as theoretical subjects but as essential business tools.
International Internship
The programme concludes with a twelve-week international internship — an unforgettable experience for all participants. Students are responsible for finding their own internship placement, choosing the country and industry that best match their interests. All placements are screened and approved in consultation with the lecturers and internship coordinator.
HOGENT’s International Office also maintains a database of screened international companies and organizations that have successfully hosted HOGENT students and are open to new placements.
The final evaluation is based on the output of all projects and the internship. At predefined assessment moments — such as project presentations and oral evaluations — students demonstrate their ability to apply their knowledge and insights effectively in practice.
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