1986: Creation of Specialised Masters

Until 1986, there was only one degree

This programme met the needs of two different groups: foreign students who would not stay in France long enough to obtain a higher education degree, and more importantly, companies seeking graduates with dual expertise (engineering and management, for example).

The first schools to offer Specialised Masters

So in 1986, Jacques Perrin, the Dean at the time, was quick to see the benefits of this new offering, and with support from Pascal Morand, then a professor at the school, he decided that ESCP would be one of the first schools to offer Specialised Masters. Two such programmes were launched in September 1986: ""Audit & Consulting", headed by Joëlle Le Vourc’h and "International Project Management", followed immediately by the "Medical Management" and "Quality Management" Specialised Masters later that year.

The success of these programmes

The success of these programmes led the school's management to significantly expand the Specialised Masters programmes – eight in 1987, 10 in 1989, 14 in 1998 – to such an extent that ESCP had become the market leader by the mid-1990s and maintains this position today. The range of Specialised Masters programmes was further extended in 2004 with the creation of the Executive Specialised Masters, designed for executives who take courses at weekends and through scheduled seminars.

A new category of students

The training provided also meets companies' needs which are not covered by the Master in Management, and the Specialised Masters have brought a new category of students to ESCP, who are older and more diverse than the students enrolled in the Master in Management. Graduates of engineering schools or humanities programmes, Specialised Masters participants come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and since many of them have already earned a five-year degree from prestigious institutions, they enhance the school's reputation among recruiters.

The accreditation from the CGE

The accreditation from the CGE, which owns the "Specialised Masters" trademark, is only awarded to member schools for training programmes that satisfy a number of quality criteria and academic requirements, including completing a mandatory thesis. A professional internship must also be an integral part of the programme for full time MS.

The beginning of the diversification

The Specialised Masters therefore represented the beginning of the diversification of the training programmes offered by the school, which in 1993 launched the first part-time MBA in France, the Master in International Management (formerly MEB) in 1995, followed by the Bachelor in 2015, without forgetting the MSc. programmes (Master of Science) which are more specifically designed for non-French students. Today, these represent a total of 24 programmes (Specialised Masters and MSc.) offered on five Campuses in the areas of finance, marketing, human resources, culture and entrepreneurship, in addition to more recent fields such as Big Data or digital transformation, for a total of over 500 students of 40 different nationalities – and other changes remain to be discovered.