Sciences Po in Paris is a prominent French public university that offers courses in Political Science, History, Economics, Law and Sociology. International students constitute 50 per cent of its strength.
The university’s director of the Centre for Asia, Etienne Cazin, and its International Affairs Manager, Alexandre Mariani, were in India in November. They spoke to The Indian Express about the partnership with Indian institutions for dual degrees, why it’s the right time to do so “due to strategic relations” between the two countries, their concerns about global university rankings, and more. Excerpts:
Etienne: We need many universities. In our system, all students need to spend one full year abroad just before they get their bachelors, which is compulsory. In India, we currently have 13 partners and we’re trying to expand.
Alexander: Our strategy is to be international and India is becoming a strategic partner. That is why Sciences Po as a university is trying to develop more partnerships, student exchanges, scholarships. We want to send more Sciences Po students to India.
The purpose of the trip is to make presentations to high schools who want to apply for degrees. We are also making presentations in our partner institutes for exchanges and speaking to undergraduate students who might be wanting to apply for their masters degree in Sciences Po.
But Sciences Po has quite good rankings in Political Science. In the QS rankings, we have been ranked third in the world in political science. It will be hard to be in the global rankings because we don’t have medicine, we don’t have engineering.
Earlier this month, prominent universities like Harvard, Yale and Berkeley schools of law withdrew from the US News and World Report university rankings stating that the matrices are in conflict with their student welfare measures…
Alexander: We see that Chinese Universities, even those which created rankings, like Jiao Tong University are withdrawing from rankings. I have very mixed feelings about ranking. In our student presentation earlier today, we said if you want to apply for a university, reputation and ranking are important, but a look at content and the academic programme is equally important.
If a university is able to attract the best researchers from all over the world, it makes a difference.
Etienne: And diversity is a very good selling point. We are so proud when we have students coming from Laos, from Djibouti…It’s very good to not have only one kind of vision, one kind of culture.
From which country do you have most of your international students?
Alexander: Americans. Second are the Germans. Third are the Chinese. Fourth from either Canada or Italy. India has the second largest Asian population and they are seventh or sixth overall.
Do you see the experience of remote teaching-learning having any kind of lasting effect in the university?
Etienne: It was difficult for us like everybody. We had to try and find the best way for teachers and students to interact and also find the best way to implement our international strategy during that time. We could not do the compulsory year abroad and it was difficult to make it work through Zoom and so on. But the good thing is that we are now a lot more flexible with hybrid courses and online courses.
Did the pandemic years see a decline in international student numbers?
Alexander: Our numbers did not decrease in the end, which was actually helped by Brexit, We became more attractive to others, though I’m very sorry for our UK colleges.
Sciences Po has seen major controversies in recent years with senior university administrators stepping down as a result. What has been done to address the concerns arising out of these?
Etienne: We take this into account very strongly and different initiatives were done including putting a special judge in Sciences Po to overview all the issues of sexual harassment affairs at the university.
Courtesy : The Indian Express