Parsons Paris in the context of Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design

The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art academies in protest of limited creative autonomy, Parsons is one of the oldest schools of art and design in New York.

Parsons was the first school to offer programs in fashion design, interior design, advertising, graphic design, transdisciplinary design, and lighting design. Parsons became the first American school to found a satellite school abroad when it established the Paris Ateliers in 1921. It remains the first and only private art and design school to affiliate with a private national research university, in 1970 when it became one of the divisions of The New School. Organized in five departments, the school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in a range of disciplines in art and design with students also able to combine additional classes and majors in other colleges of The New School.

The New School is a private research university in New York City, New York, United States. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with a mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. Since then, the school has grown to house four divisions. These include the Parsons School of Design, the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, the College of Performing Arts (which includes the Mannes School of Music) and The New School for Social Research.

In addition, the university maintains the Parsons Paris campus and has also launched or housed a range of institutions, such as the Healthy Materials Lab, the Institute for Race, Power, and Political Economy, World Policy Institute, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the India China Institute, the Observatory on Latin America, and the Center for New York City Affairs. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity". Approximately 10,000 students are enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Over 70 percent of students are in the creative areas of design, performing, and fine arts.