Instituts d'études politiques

Instituts d'études politiques (Institutes of Political Studies), or IEPs, are ten publicly owned institutions of higher learning in France. They are located in Aix-en-Provence, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Lille, Lyon, Paris, Rennes, Strasbourg and Toulouse, and since 2014 Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Their vocation is the study and research of contemporary political science. All students at the IEPs study a curriculum that is highly practical and broad-based, focusing on the full range of the social sciences across law, economics, finance, and management. These schools are considered as some of the most selective in France, mainly because they are the place where many political and business leaders are trained. These establishments are more known under the name of Sciences Po. Sciences Po Paris is considered to be the most prestigious of all the IEPs in France, and is the only one allowed to refer to itself with the epithet “Sciences Po” without indicating the name of the city where it is located, under a legal agreement with the other IEPs. Other IEPs can use the term “Sciences Po” to refer to themselves only when followed by the names of the cities where they are located, such as “Sciences Po Lille” or “Sciences Po Grenoble”. Other IEPs in France were created after the Paris one, apart from Strasbourg, which was created by the same law but with the status of an internal institute of the Robert Schuman University. According to article 2 of an 18 December 1989 decree, their mission is: to contribute to the training of higher civil servants as well as executives in the public, para-public and private sectors, notably in the State and decentralized communities to develop the research in political and administrative sciences The Sciences Po approach and style inspired many universities in France but also abroad. The most famous example the London School of Economics, founded on the model of the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques. Sciences Po institutes are Grandes Écoles, a French institution of higher education that is separate from, but parallel and connected to the main framework of the French public university system.