In the early 2010s, RSM faced a significant challenge: nearly half of its first-year students used to drop out by semester two of each academic year. This alarming trend jeopardised RSM's academic reputation and student success rates, especially with stringent government regulations looming on the horizon at the time.
During this critical juncture, Michaéla Schippers – professor in RSM’s department of Organisation and Personnel Management and academic director of the Erasmus Centre for Student and Career Success took decisive action to address the issue.
In the mid-2010s, Prof. Schippers researched and created the GoalSetting Intervention, which proved to be a big success (Schippers et al., 2015). The intervention helped decrease drop-out rates by 22%.
Since 2020, August Papadopoulos and the team at the Erasmus Centre for Student and Career Success have taken action to maximise the utility of this innovation and enable RSM to build a narrative of global positive impact.
Enter the GoalSetting era
The GoalSetting Intervention has been designed to offer life-crafting skills to first-year students.
Having compared the academic outcomes of students who had used the intervention against three control cohorts, it showed to have significantly improved academic performance and retention rates, especially among ethnic minority and male students who had previously underperformed.
Remarkably, the gender gap in academic achievement closed by 98% after the first year, and the ethnicity gap reduced by 38%, rising to 93% after the second year. Ethnic minority males saw the most substantial improvement, earning 44% more credits and increasing their retention rate by 54%. These results were also validated by independent researchers (Dekker et. Al, 2021).
Over time, the impact journey of RSM’s Erasmus Centre for Study and Career Success reached milestones in research and benefitted more than 60,000 students in the Netherlands and Greece, generating approximately € 1.8 million for RSM in second and third revenue streams.
Now, the Intervention of RSM, has not only made waves in education but has also attracted foreign direct investment!
Global impact and investment
In recent years, the success of RSM’s GoalSetting Intervention had gained international attention. Several multinational educational organisations had expressed their interest in licensing the tool. Nonetheless, it was Andreas Alexiou, a former researcher at the Erasmus Centre for Study and Career Success, who connected August Papadopoulos with the Greek-Swiss venture studio of Oliver Kirchner and Giannis Mylopoulos.
The aim of the partnership was to license the use of this intellectual property and to enable the global deployment of the Goalsetting intervention via an Erasmus Enterprise start-up: GoalStart BV. Negotiations between RSM and the Greek-Swiss side were successfully conducted by Art Bos, head of Knowledge Transfer at the Erasmus University Rotterdam’s Erasmus Research Services (ERS) with the help of Georgia Taxiarchopoulou, Business Developer at the same team.
The transition from a research methodology to an investable business case presented formidable challenges, not only of the kind that someone would expect from a Social Sciences & Humanities institute. However, this success story serves as a testament to academia's capacity to contribute multifaceted value to society, overcoming its unique challenges.
Join the celebration
RSM and ERS will host an event at the Woudestein campus on 10 September, 15:00-17:00, Polak building, Y1-10 (ECDA) to celebrate the successful commercialisation of the GoalSetting Intervention and the creation of the new spin-off company, www.goalstart.io. All are welcome to attend this event, and more details will be shared closer to the date.
