Sciences Po and the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation launch innovative training for high level sports professionals
“Sciences Po – Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation Executive Education” aims to offer new professional possibilities to sportsmen and women after they retire from competition, through multidisciplinary training throughout their sporting career. Through this initiative, the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and Sciences Po are forging new links between two worlds – high level sport and higher education.
The first program in France which enables high level sports professionals to combine competition and further study, this flexible and evolving program can be adapted to the pace and restrictions of competition. The sportsmen and women attend lessons at Sciences Po during rest periods and are supervised by a tutor during competition periods.
The program was designed for two reasons. Firstly, because sport plays too small a part in the world of higher education, and secondly because questions concerning the role of sport and high level sports professionals’ place in society have still not been sufficiently addressed.
"High level sportsmen and women can offer a lot to their communities. But until now nothing has been done within the French education system to promote them,” says Arnaud Lagardère, President of the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation.
By associating high level sports with a high quality higher education establishment, the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and Sciences Po thereby intend to offer high level athletes possibilities beyond the sporting world. The project is truly community-spirited, as Richard Descoings, Director of Sciences Po, emphasizes: “The diversity which high level sports people bring to society stimulates the quest for excellence.” He adds: "We therefore had no choice but to invest in these champions.”
Course contents
The sports professionals are offered a grounding in general culture covering the main contemporary issues, then, during a specialization phase, one of the following four majors: the corporate world, the community movement, the media, international relations.
The program is academically certified and enables sports professionals to prepare for the entrance exam for a Masters in political sciences at the university.
The first intake, all from TeamLagardère and Lagardère Paris Racing, includes tennis players Richard Gasquet and Paul-Henri Mathieu, the modern pentathlon champion Olivier Ibanez and triathlete Fabienne St-Louis
To see the list of the 2007-2008 intake (in french), click here
