Princeton Program: Consortium for Advanced Studies in Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
Program Overview
Barcelona, Spain
The Consortium for Advanced Studies in Barcelona (CASB), a collaborative initiative involving Brown, Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, Princeton, and Stanford, provides students with a unique opportunity to have direct access to three distinguished Spanish universities. The program is designed for students in all disciplines with advanced Spanish skills who are looking for serious and rigorous academic study. Woodrow Wilson School juniors are eligible to apply for the fall semester.
Students can participate in non-credit internships in a variety of areas: art and culture, education, marketing and communication, business, international relations, consulting, NGOs, science and technology, and language and translation.
CASB students are immersed in the local university environment and take most of their courses at one or more of the Consortium’s partner universities: Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Universitat Polytecnica de Catalunya (UPC), and Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Comprehensive student services support the academic and social experience.
The Universities
CASB partners with four distinguished Barcelona universities whose combined course offerings provide students with an array of opportunities in the humanities, social sciences, physical and natural sciences, art, and architecture.
- Universitat de Barcelona, founded in 1455, enrolls more than 70,000 students. Offering 75 undergraduate degrees, over 90 doctorate programs, and 390 postgraduate courses, UB is the largest of the ten universities in Catalonia and the second largest in Spain.
- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona was established in 1968 and enrolls more than 50,000 students. The state-of-the art Bellaterra campus in Cerdanyola del Vallès is home to most of its departments, institutes, and services. Seventy-eight degree programs are available at UAB, covering a wide range of fields, including the humanities and arts, social sciences, health sciences, and experimental and technological sciences.
- Universitat Polytecnica de Catalunya, founded in 1971, the is a public university specializing in the fields of architecture, health sciences, engineering, merchant seamanship, economics, and applied mathematics. It offers 68 undergraduate degrees within its 11 campuses and regional centers, 23 schools, and 42 departments. Recognized as a Campus of Excellence by the Spanish Ministry of Education, the UPC is at the cutting-edge of research and scholarship.
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra is a dynamic institution established in 1990. Today it enrolls 11,000 students and offers courses in all fields – from experimental, health, and life sciences to human and social sciences and technical studies – on an expanding campus in the heart of the city, stretching between the Ramblas and the district of Poblenou, site of the 1992 Olympics.
The City
With a population of five million and an impressive array of museums, architecture, art, and entertainment, Barcelona is one of the most important intellectual and cultural centers of Spain. Barcelona is justifiably proud of its past as a crossroads of Roman, Visigoth, and Arabic civilizations. At the same time, its progressive spirit has made it one of the most modern and cosmopolitan cities in the world.
The region’s vast historical, cultural, linguistic, and artistic legacy is an ideal looking glass through which to examine key political, social, economic, and cultural issues affecting Spain, the Mediterranean region, and the whole of Europe today. Barcelona is just half an hour from sandy beaches, three hours from the majestic peaks of the Pyrenees, and two hours from the French border.