Master's Common academic curriculum

Learning objectives

The Masters’ Common Academic Curriculum programme (CAC) constitutes a place for dialogue among disciplines, schools, and fundamental contemporary issues. It enables students coming from the eight schools to develop a strong shared culture, and to enrich their specialized track with a foundation of core skills.

The CAC programme is a key component of the first-year curriculum, and one of the distinctive features of the study path offered at Sciences Po.

Courses are designed and taught by faculty members from Sciences Po, as well as by recognized experts in their fields. They draw on the latest research findings and allow students to explore the scientific debates that contribute to our understanding of major contemporary transformations.

Each course takes a major question or contemporary issue as its starting point and approaches it from a broad, multidisciplinary, and comparative perspective. The goal is to guide students in analyzing the major transformations of the contemporary world (democracy, the environment, inequality, artificial intelligence, international security, etc.) in a well-researched, personal, critical, and creative manner.

The course offer is unique: each semester, students can choose from 20 lecture courses that are accessible to all students, with no prerequisites, offered in both French and English (C1 level recommended in each language).

These courses invite students to learn about the research conducted by the scientific community at Sciences Po, and to analyze questions by drawing on the knowledge, reasoning, and methods of the five disciplines (law, economics, history, sociology, and political science), as well as the humanities (literature, art history, philosophy, etc.) and the sciences.

Beyond the acquisition of knowledge, courses aim to develop academic and intellectual skills that students can apply throughout their academic and professional careers. They mobilize pedagogical approaches that encourage inquiry, debate, the exchange of viewpoints, and active student participation. The core skills mobilized in the courses are organized around four main areas:

• Adopting a research-oriented approach to answer a question, in a rigorous, reasoned and in-depth way.
• Adopting a decentered perspective and examining multiple viewpoints to develop a thorough, personal, and critical analysis.
• Using foresight and anticipation methods to propose ideas and new solutions and to inform decision-making.
• Developing collective intelligence and cooperating to solve a question.

By bringing together students from all schools and diverse backgrounds, the Masters’ Common Academic Curriculum programme fosters dialogue, the exchange of perspectives, and collective intelligence. In this way, it helps strengthen the cohesion of the student community while preparing students to understand and navigate a complex world.

Course list

• Autumn Semester
• Spring Semester

Academic Requirements

All enrolled in the first year of the Master’s programmes have to take one common academic curriculum course each semester. 

Successful completion of these two courses is a requirement for obtaining the Master’s degree.