ASG Study Program

The Adenauer School of Government (ASG) is a new school, dedicated to research and education in public governance.

Want to use your skills to tackle the defining challenges of our time, but feel you are not yet fully equipped to do so?

Real progress, we believe, comes from bringing students, researchers and decision-makers into the same room. And from holding every idea to a hard test: rigorous analytical and empirical work, interdisciplinary exchange, and solutions measured against reality. At the ASG, you learn with and from the best: internationally leading scholars, experienced practitioners from policy, public administration, and society, and peers equally committed to answers that hold up.

Our Program

The ASG's first study program is a Master's Degree in Public Governance, launching in winter term 2027/28, taught in English, and offered with no tuition fees as a regular degree program of the University of Cologne. It is designed for students currently enrolled in master's-level programs as well as for recent graduates. Conceived as a compact program that complements and advances prior studies, it can be completed within one year.

Our Topics

The ASG is being built from the ground up, with a mandate to rethink what graduate education in public governance can be – and the institutional support to do it. The program combines intellectual rigor and analytical thinking with hands-on problem-solving and builds the methodological skills, including data science and AI, needed to address governance challenges in a world increasingly shaped by technology and data. In interactive formats, students work alongside distinguished scholars and experienced decision-makers to develop solutions to real-world policy problems. Topics include AI in public governance, markets and democracies in crisis, energy and climate, and security.

Our Faculty

Explore our ASG Faculty Network – an international community of leading scholars who are in various ways affiliated with the School from institutions including Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford. Together with our Cologne-based faculty, its members shape the Master's curriculum and contribute through research, academic advice, and institution building.

Guiding the School's academic direction is a Scientific Advisory Board whose members include four Nobel laureates.

Our Students

We look for outstanding academic performance, a strong sense of responsibility, and the ambition to solve the increasingly complex problems at the intersection of public governance, economics, law, and technology. What unites our candidates is the ability to think analytically and quantitatively, the drive to develop solutions that work, and an openness to learning from other disciplines while contributing their own expertise. We keep cohorts small, which creates an environment for interdisciplinary learning, close collaboration, and direct exchange with outstanding faculty and peers.