The Master’s Program in Political Science

 

Important notice

From winter semester 2024/25, a new curriculum will apply to the Master’s Program in Political Science, which will be binding for all newly enrolled students.

Students who started their studies according to the 2016 curriculum (i.e. enrolled between winter semester 2016/17 and summer semester 2024) can complete their studies according to this curriculum until October 1, 2027 at the latest. After that, they will automatically be transferred to the 2024 curriculum. However, they can also switch to the new curriculum earlier by notifying the Office of Admissions.

 

The most important changes

  • The previous 4 thematic areas are reduced to 3. The previous thematic area of Democracy and Legitimacy will be integrated into Comparative Politics. As before, students must select 2 thematic areas as elective modules.
  • A Professional Skills module is introduced as a new compulsory module, in which students can select two courses according to their interests or needs, which deal with advanced methods, practical orientation and/or academic writing.
  • Another new feature is a cross-sectional module that is included in all degree programs at the University of Salzburg and is dedicated to socio-ecological crises, such as gender, sustainability and the climate crisis, democracy education, poverty or migration research.
  • The Master’s thesis is now only assessed with 24 (instead of 30) ECTS points. This means that, compared to the previous curriculum, an additional course must be completed.
  • In the future, the Master’s examination will no longer consist of the examination of material from the two PS Basic Texts in the two elective modules chosen by the students. Instead, students will have to present their Master’s thesis and answer questions from the examination board in the first part (so-called defensio). In the second part, students are questioned on a further topic unrelated to the topic of the Master’s thesis.

 

Links

MA Political Science (Curriculum 2016)
MA Political Science (Curriculum 2024)