Sciences Po is a university engaged in teaching and research, with four fundamental and complementary missions:

1. Initial and executive education

• Students apply for initial education programmes:
• either immediately after completing their high-school studies (after the baccalaureate in France)
• or to enrol in a master's programme
• or to enrol in the Doctoral School  

Alongside the courses aimed at students undergoing initial education, Sciences Po has, for over 30 years, been developing training programmes for executives and managers in the public and private sectors.

2. Research
Sciences Po relies on a research platform made up of university professors, researchers, doctoral students and some 9 research centres. Sciences Po carries out research in five main disciplines: history, economics, political science, sociology and law; this research finds applications in a great number of fields (public policies, social inequalities, urban, security and defence issues, development, the environment, migrations, etc.

3. Documentation
The Sciences Po library offers access to an outstanding collection of works (almost 900,000 volumes). It has more than 15,000 newspapers, journals and annual publications, including 2,650 ongoing subscriptions. Many of its resources can be accessed off-campus: 14,500 online journals (full text), plus 50 online databases (including over 20,000 press titles from all over the world), and 520 e-books.

• Over 2,500 digitized press clippings are also available.
• More than 1.3 million items are downloaded from the library every year.

4. Publishing

• Les Presses de Sciences Po, a leading research and university press, helps disseminate French intellectual production in the social sciences and humanities (some 10 journals, a catalogue of 1,000 titles, some 30 new works a year and many translations).

On top of these missions, we must add the support teams (human resources, financial department, general services and real estate, information systems, communication) that enable Sciences Po to successfully carry out its everyday activities.