The university's undergraduate program is taught on the Paris campus as well as on the decentralized campuses in Dijon , Le Havre , Menton , Nancy , Poitiers and Reims , each with their own academic program focused on a geopolitical part of the world. While Sciences Po historically specialized in political science , it progressively expanded to other social sciences such as economics , law and sociology. Sciences Po Paris is the only Institute of Political Sciences in France allowed to refer to itself with the epithet "Sciences Po" without indicating the name of the city where their headquarters are located, under a legal agreement with the other institutes.
The founders of the school sought to reform the training of the French political and economic elite by establishing a new "breeding ground where nearly all the major, non-technical state commissioners were trained. From to , Other countries created similar schools in the following century. The connection between Sciences Po and French institutions meant that the school also played a key role in the apparatus of the French colonial empires.
In , the university established a colonial studies program with the goal of training students to take on professions in the colonial administration in a way that "propagates [ At France's liberation from Nazi occupation , the public servants were accused of collaborating with the Vichy regime and Nazi Germany [14] [32] Communist politicians including Georges Cogniot accused the school to be the "home of collaboration" with Nazi Germany [14] and proposed abolishing the ELSP entirely and founding a new state-run administration college on its premises.
The choice regarding the future of the school would be made by France's Provisional Government, under Charles de Gaulle. Both were tasked by the French government to ensure "the progress and the spread, both within and outside France, of political science, economics, and sociology".
The two entities work together in lockstep, however, as the director of the school is, by tradition, also the administrator of FNSP. This institutional arrangement gives Sciences Po a unique status, as the school draws most of its resources through substantial government subsidies to FNSP, but does not subject it to many government interventions and regulations, giving it a much higher level of autonomy compared to other French universities and schools.
