Learn & Grow | Academics | Ateneo de Manila University

Learn and Grow

Whatever stage you are in life, Ateneo de Manila believes learning should encompass your overall development, giving you the tools and skills necessary to build a career, to realize your full potential as an individual, and to become a responsible and engaged citizen.

Student-centered learning places you at the heart of instruction. Teaching facilitates active participation and independent inquiry, and instills in you the joy of learning inside and outside the classroom.

How and when you learn is just as important. Ignatian pedagogy emphasizes learning, grounded in experience, repetition for depth, the provision of many examples and exercises to ensure mastery, and constant guidance and personal care (cura personalis). This process of self-reflection on deeper meaning and purposes leads to a careful weighing of options and considered action.

The ultimate aim of an Ateneo education is to form persons who will always choose to make a positive difference in the world, whatever path they take.

Undergraduate Education

Five of our schools -- Education & Learning Design, Humanities, Management, Science & Engineering, and Social Sciences -- offer a wide range of undergraduate degree programs.

What makes Ateneo college education distinctive is the deliberate weaving together of the core curriculum majors, and co-curricula. The content, approach, and overall experience of learning imbue graduates with both specialized disciplinary training and holistic formation. The importance given to the liberal arts, interdisciplinarity, service-learning, and formation mark Ateneo's Jesuit identity.

Core curriculum: The heart of Ateneo college education

The core curriculum is the hallmark and heart of your Ateneo college education. It strives for both academic competence and value formation, through a deliberate progression of learning.

Foundational courses sharpen your language and communication skills and equip you with basic scientific and mathematical tools. Courses which explore faith and spirituality, and facilitate self-understanding, prepare you for investigating and knowing the world, and defining yourself in the world – bringing you to a readiness to discern life options and make life choices.

Our hope is that you will become a leader who will engage the world and commit yourself to using your competences to work for social transformation, rooted in a mature Christian faith.

Majors and minors: What to study

In Ateneo, there is an undergraduate major that will suit your interests and future plans. Each one of the 49 majors and specializations is comprehensive and rigorous, providing you with the best preparation for your future career, or for further studies.

In addition, minor programs allow you to pursue an interest or field other than your major or concentration in greater detail. Minors expand your learning, complementing your main field of study, or gives you an additional outlet for your talents and skills.

Co-curriculum: Formation and social development

Develop and integrate your personal, academic, socio-cultural, and spiritual lives through the co-curriculum, or the Integrated Ateneo Formation Program (InAF).

You will be honed to harness your academic competence and training in the service of nation-building even as you act on your responsibilities as global citizens. You will be guided by Ignatian discernment and nurtured by a personal relationship with God, strongly oriented towards faith and justice, and rooted in culture.

Ateneo Undergraduate Education

Graduate & Professional Education

Ateneo de Manila's graduate education programs provides students the opportunity for further professional and personal growth, giving them a superior degree of competence in research and professional practice. One can choose among a wide range of graduate and professional degree programs offered by the University's nine higher education schools.

Graduate education is a stage where leaders are prepared to take on the role as innovators and change agents in their own organizations and communities. As such, graduate students, through their enhanced intellectual and research capacities, are expected to contribute not only to knowledge production but more importantly to the advancement of policy and practice.

Our nine schools - Graduate School of Business, Education and Learning Design, Government, Humanities, Law, Management, Medicine & Public Health, Science and Engineering, and Social Sciences - offer students world-class graduate education that uniquely positions them for to lead change and innovation in their professions.

Our graduate programs respond to the University’s commitment to the education of the whole person by providing a broad range of degree programs that are grounded on theory, informed by practice, global in perspective, and rooted in and culturally sensitive to local needs and realities.

Ateneo Graduate Education

Basic Education (K to 12)

Ateneo de Manila’s basic education unit forms servant-leaders who have an intimate and faithful relationship with Christ, are competent in every aspect, compassionate with others, with a well-formed conscience, and a commitment to serve the country and the global community.

Basic Education (K-12)

Continuing & Lifelong Education

Ateneo education and formation made accessible to many through various short courses, seminars, and programs, offered by its component schools, research centers, and hubs.