Many students look forward to living it up during their college years. Now, at a university in France, you can even get a degree in it.

Students of Sciences Po Lille, the country’s top social sciences university in the northern French city, can now earn a masters in Boire, Manger, Vivre (BMV) — that is, “drinking, eating and living.”

Sciences Po is the first institution for higher education to offer a program in the art, science and business of joie de vivre, where pupils will have the opportunity to explore a foodie’s most pressing questions, like “what is a good coffee?” and what are the “secrets of the fifth flavor, umami?”

Academic directors assure that it’s more than a course on getting smashed — it’s essential to preserving France’s place as the world’s most treasured culinary destination, according to a recent report by Le Monde.

“BMV is neither the Michelin guide nor the boozy student common room,” said economics lecturer Benôit Lengaigne, per the Telegraph.

The new program was introduced to widespread mockery among students, many of whom “burst into laughter” at the announcement, said Lengaigne. But the 15 lucky students selected for study during its inaugural year, out of 70 applications, would become the “envy of their colleagues.”

Classes cover an interdisciplinary range of subjects that intersect with the culinary world, including food tech, labor, philanthropy and “gastro-diplomacy” — what experts say is fundamental to French supremacy as a global treasure.

“We threw ourselves into this major without knowing what was in it, but it’s fascinating,” Clémence Ricart, a student told Le Monde newspaper. “It is a masters course that unites us around one passion: the world of gastronomy and food. Given the climate emergency, food will be at the heart of global challenges.”

Indeed, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) officially recognized the “gastronomic meal of the French” as part of the “intangible cultural heritage of humanity” in 2010, making French dining tables legitimate world heritage sites.

Meanwhile, the impact of climate change has thrown the livestock and agricultural industries — and, consequently, already hungry people — in peril. That’s why students are already writing essays on remedies to overfishing, plant-based meat and food insecurity.

They’re also tackling the political impact of cuisine, with lessons in the history of farming, the delivery-gig economy or workplace sexism in the post-MeToo era of restaurant kitchens.

“Here we propose to do things seriously without taking ourselves seriously,” Pierre Mathiot, the director of Sciences Po Lille, told Le Monde.

The question remains how well the degree translates into jobs.

“It’s one of the best ways to ignite 20-year-old students’ passion for changing or saving the world through their future profession” said Lengaigne, who sees students moving on to a variety of sectors covered in in the program, such as tourism, wine or entrepreneurial endeavors.

One unnamed student in their first year of the program shared that he feared “future employers would laugh when they saw the heading ‘drink, eat, live’ on our CV. But given the initial feedback from business, we’re convinced that it will work.”