Learning outcomes, academic opportunities and employability

Learning outcomes

The EPOG+ Mas­ter’s course has been designed to address the objec­tives of the pro­gramme and to enhance stu­dents’ employ­a­bil­i­ty and poten­tial aca­d­e­m­ic per­spec­tives. Refer­ring to the “Euro­pean Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Frame­work”, the EPOG+ Mas­ter’s cor­re­sponds to the learn­ing out­comes for “EQF lev­el 7”.

The knowl­edge, skills and com­pe­tences of EPOG+ grad­u­ates includes:

• (i) a state-of-the-art knowl­edge and exper­tise in one of the main fields of eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy (relat­ed to Majors A, B and C) and with­in a com­mon per­spec­tive (insti­tu­tion­al and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach­es to globalisation);
• (ii) an in-depth “sys­temic” under­stand­ing of the inter­ac­tions among eco­nom­ic poli­cies (relat­ed to the two cours­es and the joint sem­i­nars pro­vid­ed to entire cohort);
• (iii) the unique cor­re­spond­ing skills and com­pe­tences, in par­tic­u­lar, the abil­i­ty to deal with the com­plex and sys­temic inter­ac­tions among eco­nom­ic poli­cies and to work in an inter­na­tion­al and cos­mopoli­tan context. 

Grad­u­ates should have a crit­i­cal aware­ness of the prob­lems relat­ed to glob­al tran­si­tion process­es. They should be able to work on com­plex and var­ied issues and deal with dif­fer­ent opin­ions and back­grounds in a team. They should be able to pro­vide informed and fair assess­ments of the var­i­ous solu­tions and pro­pose hypothe­ses and ideas that go beyond the restate­ment or repro­duc­tion of past knowl­edge. They should be able to present their own views in a clear and suc­cinct man­ner, and respond to objec­tions in a firm, but diplo­mat­ic way.

Learn­ing out­comes also includes French lan­guage skills and pos­si­bly skills in the lan­guage of the coun­try the stu­dent vis­its (see the lan­guage pol­i­cy).

Academic opportunities and employability

EPOG+ Mas­ter’s grad­u­ates are able to address the main prob­lems of eco­nom­ic poli­cies for the glob­al tran­si­tion and be pre­pared to respond to real life prob­lems in a vari­ety of nation­al and pro­fes­sion­al con­texts.

EPOG+ grad­u­ates are also to research and thus pre­pared to start a PhD after grad­u­a­tion. The EPOG alum­ni have demon­strat­ed their capac­i­ty to be select­ed in pres­ti­gious PhD pro­grammes of lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties all around the world (e.g., Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds, SOAS, New-York Uni­ver­si­ty, Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, UMass Amherst, Uni­ver­si­ties of Paris 10, Paris 13, etc.) and in a vari­ety of aca­d­e­m­ic fields (eco­nom­ics but also soci­ol­o­gy, polit­i­cal sci­ences, geog­ra­phy, man­age­ment, etc.). 

The high employ­a­bil­i­ty of the grad­u­ates in their home coun­tries and third coun­tries is con­firmed by a sur­vey of EPOG grad­u­ates: while a third of EPOG+ grad­u­ates can be expect­ed to pur­sue an aca­d­e­m­ic career, the remain­ing two-thirds are like­ly to find promis­ing posi­tions in com­pa­nies, con­sul­tan­cy teams, NGOs or pub­lic enti­ties such as min­istries, reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, research cen­tres and inter­na­tion­al / inter-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions. Many grad­u­ates have indeed been hired on pol­i­cy-mak­er posi­tions with com­pa­nies, inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions (e.g., FAO, UNCTAD, ECB), finan­cial insti­tu­tions (e.g., ESMA), and non-gov­ern­men­tal civ­il-soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions (e.g. Médecins du Monde), etc.

Employ­a­bil­i­ty and aca­d­e­m­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties is enhanced by the large net­work of part­ners and asso­ci­at­ed part­ners, com­ing from both the aca­d­e­m­ic and non-aca­d­e­m­ic worlds and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet promi­nant researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers in some of the cours­es and in par­tic­u­lar in the “joint sem­i­nars”. The increas­ing­ly large and active net­work of EPOG alum­ni at world­wide lev­el is also be a major asset for new grad­u­ates’ employability.