[Thomas McGee]
Recent student demonstrations in universities across France have reinforced the popular image of a politically aware, committed nation. By contrast, Britain’s student population is often portrayed as rather apathetic. While educational institutions in both countries face many similar difficulties, a cross-Channel comparison is problematic. There are a number of different structural and cultural factors motivating and limiting such action in both countries. The French student movement is ostensibly directed against the Pécresse law, (named after the Minister of Higher Education, Valérie Pécresse), with anti-Sarkozy sentiment and a desire to antagonise the authorities cited as added motivation. Introduced by Prime Minister Fillon’s government in August 2007, the law, encompassing many aspects of university education, proposes two significant changes.
Firstly, each university’s governing body, responsible for its policy, is to give proportionally greater representation to ‘personalities external to the establishment’. For the student majority, this externalisation of power amounts to a semi-privatisation of public universities. Student syndicates are calling for resistance against this implicit ‘marketisation’ that threatens institutions where corporate enterprise has as much as double the representation of the student body. While institutions may retain their financial autonomy, legislative and executive independence may still be threatened by corporate interest.
There are also strong fears that this loss of sovereignty can easily translate into a ‘pricing up’ of education. Stripped of its intrinsic value, education is given a price tag as little more than the means to the assumed inevitable end of employability. But university should be more than a factory manufacturing future employees.
The second aspect of the law is less universally welcomed. It derives from the desire to increase French universities’ international competitiveness, through administrative decentralisation and a de-standardisation of faculties. Until now, a French undergraduate degree from any two public institutions was of equal value: so much so that often the name of the institution is left off CVs. This artificial regulation holds faculties in equilibrium, creating a national base. But the new law gives each institution the freedom to impose its own entrance requirements, to find private funding and independently manage its budget – all typical of Britain. This would naturally lead to the emergence of elite universities, as well as condemning others as ‘universités poubelles.’
The disparity between British universities evolved long ago.Their varying reputations are now well established. One accepts this as the point of departure for understanding and advancing Britain’s higher education system. In France, however, this ‘deregulation’ has been radically opposed. Independence from corporate influence is supported, but not autonomy of individual faculties.
While French public universities are valued equally, this does not mean there is no elite education. Elite institutions are private, not integrated into the public system. For as long as people have money, education will be bought and sold. In France, this takes the form of the highly competitive, often specialist, grandes écoles, which guarantee professional security to their students. The public and private co-exist, yet remain separate.
The question is whether such elitism is better within the state system or outside it. At least the French separation of standardised public, and private elite, institutions makes education available to all. The Pécresse law though would open the gate to fees increases, and a shift in the direction towards the English system. ‘We are not for sale’ read the students’ banners. It is undoubtedly the current low fees that enable them to mobilise themselves in such effective protest. Paradoxically, the greater education’s price, the greater its immunity from criticism. Paying so little allows French students greater force in demanding quality. A Cambridge faculty blocked for a month is inconceivable. Annual fees of three thousand pounds mean one has much more to lose. But surely this should be more to fight for, if only down other avenues that do not disrupt the running of the university.
All too often price and value become confused and I fear this happening in France too. The illusory material price must be erased, and the actual value and quality of education re-assessed. If decentralised and autonomous, the universities will lose their national solidarity. France needs one last collective chorus of disapproval before they begin to go solo.
