École des Mines de Saint-Étienne

The oldest of France’s elite engineering schools outside Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne, founded in 1816, is one of the seven schools of mines founded between 1783 and 1992. While proud of its heritage, it has transformed in recent years from being an elite vocational school to a "fully integrated graduate research college.”

With declared core values of "Education, Research and Dedication to Economic Development" it aims to be "a laboratory and a key player in the industry of the future". Pascal Roy, appointed director in 2014, declared an ambition to create the "best engineering school outside Paris" within five years.

While still predominantly based in St Etienne, where it has three campuses including the Northern Hospital, it developed its master's courses in 2003 in microelectronic engineering and computer science at Gardenne near Marseilles.

Highly selective on the basis of an entrance examination, it enrols around 1,850 students each year, around a quarter of them from overseas. Of these around 500 take its flagship graduate diploma, Ingenieur Civil des Mines (ICM).

Research Centres of Excellence focus on energy and processes, optimised materials, industrial, engineering, microelectronics and health. Around 30 per cent of students take at least one biomedical module as part of their courses. Recent institutional spinoffs include Opti Waves, a microwave oven for cooking dental plates.

There 19 double-diploma agreements include a joint engineering/business programme with Lyon-based EMLYON, while a specialist masters in Green Economy has been offered at the Northern Polytechnic of Oran, Algeria since 2016.