Geneva - Education

Education

Geneva is home to the University of Geneva, founded by John Calvin in 1559. In 2011, the ranking web of universities ranked it 35th European university.

Located in the heart of International Geneva, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies was among the first academic institutions to teach international relations in the world and it proposes today MA and PhD programmes in Law, Political Science, History, Economics, International Affairs, and Development Studies.

Also, the oldest international school in the world is located in Geneva, the International School of Geneva, founded in 1924 along with the League of Nations. Webster University, an accredited American university, also has a campus in Geneva. Moreover, the city is home to the Institut International de Lancy (founded in 1903), the International University in Geneva, an accredited International university and the Geneva Business School, a world-class international business school founded in 2001.

The Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations is a private university on the grounds of the Château de Penthes, an old manor with a park and view of Lake Geneva.

The Canton of Geneva's public school system has écoles primaires (ages 4–12) and cycles d'orientation (ages 12–15). The obligation to attend school ends at age 16, but secondary education is provided by collèges (ages 15–19), the oldest of which is the Collège Calvin, which could be considered one of the oldest public schools in the world.

Geneva also has a choice of private schools. However, out of all the educational and research facilities in Geneva, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is probably the best known on a world basis and most recently renown for the Large Hadron Collider. Founded in 1954, CERN was one of Europe's first joint ventures and has developed as the world's largest particle physics laboratory. Physicists from around the world travel to CERN to research matter and explore the fundamental forces and materials that form the universe.

About 44,176 (24.8%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 40,733 or (22.9%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule). Of the 40,733 who completed tertiary schooling, 31.3% were Swiss men, 31.1% were Swiss women, 20.5% were non-Swiss men and 17.2% were non-Swiss women.

During the 2009-2010 school year, there were a total of 28,930 students in the Geneva school system. The education system in the Canton of Geneva allows young children to attend two years of non-obligatory Kindergarten. During that school year, there were 2,805 children who were in a pre-kindergarten class. The canton's school system provides two years of non-mandatory kindergarten and requires students to attend six years of primary school, with some of the children attending smaller, specialized classes. In Geneva there were 4,109 students in kindergarten or primary school and 607 students were in the special, smaller classes. The secondary school program consists of three lower, obligatory years of schooling, followed by three to five years of optional, advanced schools. There were 4,109 lower secondary students who attended school in Geneva. There were 6,188 upper secondary students from the municipality along with 1,461 students who were in a professional, non-university track program. An additional 2,987 students attended a private school.

As of 2000, there were 12,038 students in Geneva who came from another municipality, while 4,219 residents attended schools outside the municipality.

Geneva is home to five major libraries, the Bibliothèques municipales Genève, the Haute école de travail social, Institut d'études sociales, the Haute école de santé, the Ecole d'ingénieurs de Genève and the Haute école d'art et de design. There were (as of 2008) 877,680 books or other media in the libraries, and in the same year 1,798,980 items were loaned.