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August Papadopoulos, director of impact and engagement at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM), is pleased to announce the licensing agreement for the GoalSetting Intervention, a new RSM-inspired start-up based on campus, GoalStart BV (www.goalstart.io). The goalsetting intervention is an evidence-based methodology developed by Prof. Michaela Schippers that enhances student retention and closes gender and ethnic gaps in performance. Licensing this intellectual property to foreign investors marks a new chapter for RSM’s international engagement and fosters impact by enhancing inclusive prosperity, entrepreneurship and economic development in the region as well as on campus. Because when students succeed, societies prosper.

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.

More information

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) is one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools. RSM provides ground-breaking research and education furthering excellence in all aspects of management and is based in the international port city of Rotterdam – a vital nexus of business, logistics and trade. RSM’s primary focus is on developing business leaders with international careers who can become a force for positive change by carrying their innovative mindset into a sustainable future. Our first-class range of bachelor, master, MBA, PhD and executive programmes encourage them to become critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinkers and doers. www.rsm.nl

For more information about RSM or this release, please contact Erika Harriford-McLaren, communications manager for RSM, on +31 10 408 2877 or by email at harriford@rsm.nl

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