Founded in 1875, the Institut Catholique de Paris (ICP) is one of France’s most distinguished private research universities, specializing in the humanities and social sciences. With a mission to educate open-minded, engaged citizens capable of contributing to the common good, ICP welcomes 11,000 students each year across its campuses in Paris, Reims, and Rouen, and its regional campuses in Tours and Cergy.
A deeply international institution, ICP draws students from 65 nationalities, with 22% of its student body coming from outside France, and maintains partnerships with 250 universities across 56 countries. Faculty and researchers reflect the same spirit of openness, with half of ICP’s 1,000 teachers and researchers coming from professional fields outside academia.
Awarded the “Bienvenue en France” label for the quality of its international student experience, ICP combines rigorous academic excellence with a genuine commitment to welcoming a wide range of intellectual, geographic, and social backgrounds.
ICP pursues its mission across student support, research, and heritage preservation. It offers a full range of degree programs from bachelor’s to PhD across its Paris, Reims, and Rouen campuses, as well as regional campuses in the Normandy and Champagne regions.
To ensure that all students can access quality education, ICP offers need-based and merit-based scholarships across all degree levels. To help meet demand, ICP is actively working to expand the scholarship program so that talented students from all backgrounds, regardless of financial means, can pursue their studies at any level.
Its research activity is organized around a dedicated research unit, five specialized research institutes, a doctoral college, and several research chairs. These chairs bring together students, business leaders, practitioners, and academics from different disciplines and produce research and study programs that benefit both academic inquiry and professional practice.
ICP stewards an exceptional heritage at the heart of the Latin Quarter. Its Paris campus is built on the historic site of a 17th-century Carmelite convent. The adjoining Jardin des Carmes, a rare enclosed garden in the heart of Paris, has been part of the university since its founding. Several buildings of the convent complex are classified as Monuments Historiques, and their preservation is an active and ongoing responsibility.
Institut Catholique de Paris also holds an extraordinarily rich collection of documents and texts comprising over 700,000 items dating from 2100 B.C. to today, spanning all disciplines of the humanities and representing one of the most significant collections in the field of religious humanities in France. Distributed across four different sites on campus, a new university library is currently under construction to consolidate this exceptional collection, allowing for better access for students and scholars from around the world, as well as better preservation capacities for the library’s rare and historic pieces, which include a set of 800 cuneiform tablets and Mesopotamian cylinder seals. To support this major project and preserve and promote these valuable collections, ICP has launched a fundraising campaign to bring this remarkable new site to life, with an anticipated opening date in 2027.
With Friends of Fondation de France, U.S. donors can support Institut Catholique de Paris by making tax-deductible contributions to the following projects:
– Creation of the University Library (2025-2027): ICP holds over 700,000 items gathered since its foundation in 1875 and distributed across 4 different locations on campus. Because ICP draws an increasing number of international students and researchers, the collections must be brought together in one central and larger building for more space, more staff availability, better preservation of its Heritage Collection.
– Expansion of the ICP scholarship program so that talented students from all backgrounds have access to quality higher education (social criteria – and merit-based) in all degrees including PhD.
– Development of regional campuses: since 2021, ICP provides two regional campuses in Normandy and Champagne regions. ICP raises funds to both renovate their buildings and equip them with the best tools/environment (library, refectory, garden).
– Heritage preservation of ICP’s listed buildings (Couvent des Carmes/Jardin des Carmes)
– Support of ICP 3 research chairs: “Citizenship and AI” ; “Africa-Europe relations” ; “Corporations and Common Good”
Photo: © Frédéric Albert / ICP
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