By Georgia Nicklin, BSc Finance and Management with the University of Venice at the ICMA Centre, Henley Business School.
Whilst a lot of students at Ca’ Foscari have their lectures spread around the city, the Economics and Management students have their very own campus to themselves called ‘San Giobbe’. The campus is at the very top of Venice in the district, Cannaregio, and has its own ‘bar’ (canteen, as we English folk say), library and lecture halls (labelled as ‘Aula’ in Italian).
With my accommodation being located in the very centre of Venice, it only took me 20 minutes to walk to San Giobbe. The walk is very pretty and crosses multiple bridges so you get your exercise in for the day!
Modules/Exams
The modules you will take in Venice are:
- Introduction to Econometrics
- International Business Strategy
- Human Resource Management
- Management Accounting
- Marketing
- Business Labour Law 1
- Introduction to the Modern Firm 2
- Research Project (my topic was ‘Testing the validity of the CAPM based on a sample of 10 stocks’)
All of the modules in Venice are very management-focused, compared to your first year studying at Reading where they are very finance-focused. I found this to be a nice change and the subjects were nice and easy to follow which meant less time studying and more time exploring Italy (…but ssshhhh!)
In comparison to the modules, the research project was completely finance-focused and relates back to the first year module ‘Introduction to Finance/Trading Simulation I’ where you are first introduced to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). My supervisor, Monica Billio, helped me choose the topic and provided a lot of guidance throughout my analysis. Monica was also my econometrics lecturer so we integrated a lot of the content that we had covered from that particular module, which was useful.
A few of the modules involved group work (coursework) which was a great way to make new friends. A few of my Italian friends, who are permanent students at Ca’ Foscari, were really helpful throughout my university experience – from helping me with basic questions about the university to recommending some good local bars!
Unlike at the ICMA Centre, where the lecturers put the PowerPoint slides up instantly, this wasn’t always the case at Ca’ Foscari so you do need textbooks for most modules.
Term Dates
There are four terms at Ca’ Foscari, each lasting for six weeks. At the end of every term there is an exam session. For this reason, there will be exams at the start of November, end of December, end of March and mid-May.
The beauty is that you can resit an exam many times and Reading will accept your best mark. They have resit periods in January and end of May/June. So technically, if you didn’t want to sit an exam at the end of December (because it’s literally the week before Christmas!) you could sit this in January or May/June.
I was ill in December so ended up sitting mine in January. But if you get the exams done in December it means you have a whole month off in January because third term doesn’t start again until February. So whichever you prefer!
There are no Easter holidays, although you get Easter Monday off. The fifth week of every term is classed as a ‘revision week’ with no lectures so at least that’s some time off, I guess! Despite this, the Italians seem to have a lot of bank holidays – particularly in April and May – so I can assure you that the time off is made up!
Georgia is a student at the ICMA Centre studying BSc Finance and Management. The degree is a unique three year experience, where students spend their second year at Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice. As the first student from Reading to have completed this part of the programme, we’ve got Georgia to share her experiences during her year in Venice.
In part five, Georgia will cover travelling to/from and around Venice.