The Strangling of the French Universities

For some years now, evaluations of universities around the world are from time to time the subject of reports, in particular by Jiao Tong University in Shangai and by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). The French universities do not come out well in these rankings, probably because of the peculiarities of the French system of organizing research and higher education: firstly because research institutions are separated from universities, and secondly because of the existence of the grandes écoles alongside the universities.
Nevertheless, it is undeniably true that the French universities are deteriorating, according to Jean-Jacques Salomon. This decline cannot be attributed solely to lack of funding, nor therefore can it be overcome merely by increasing the budget for research and development. As Olivier Postel-Vinay has rightly argued before, it arises from four obstacles to any possibility of reform: the universities’ lack of independence, the way that funds are allocated, the fact that researchers are civil servants and the highly centralized state.
But in addition to these obstacles, which Jean-Jacques Salomon also emphasizes, there are plenty of other problems: the proliferation of universities and the huge increase in student numbers (without a corresponding increase in the number of teachers and administrators) resulting from a pseudo-democratization of higher education and the priority given in France to longer academic courses rather than to vocational and technical courses, which are held in low esteem. Consequently the aim of ensuring that 80% of every age cohort reaches the level of the baccalauréat (school-leaving examination) is demagogic and misleading, the author argues. For one thing, many young people leave school without either a qualification or any training; for another, this does not prevent the best students from aiming for the top institutions of higher education, leaving the rest to turn to the universities, which in reality lack the means to cope with them properly, much less to provide everyone with the high quality of education that only a dozen universities can claim to offer.
This assessment has been made over and over again for more than half a century, says Jean-Jacques Salomon, yet no reform has ever been undertaken that is adequate to meet the challenges. On the contrary, the Ministry of Education has constantly issued “paradoxical injunctions” that are harmful in every respect, and especially to the students.
However, the decline of the French universities is not inevitable, the author argues. He makes some propositions that are decidedly provocative to French eyes, such as the suggestion that universities should be given enough independence to be able to choose their students, their teachers, their administrators, their fees, their degree courses and syllabuses …
The author strongly criticizes the bottlenecks and the hypocrisy inherent in the French policy on education and training, which he calls “a machine for reproducing inequalities” that leads to a poor standard of higher education in France and to a sense of bitterness and frustration on the part of many young people.