• 2 months ago
It’s the "rentrée universitaire" in France. As university students head back to the classroom, we take a look at how French public higher education ranks internationally. We also dive into the financial troubles facing some public universities and their students, as many grapple to find affordable housing and pay for food. 
This Entre Nous aired on Paris Direct, September 17, 2024. A programme produced by Amanda Alexander, Marina Pajovic and Georgina Robertson.

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00:00And here in France it's back to school time for the country's university students and to discuss this
00:05Solange Mougen joins us in the studio. Solange, you've done an assessment of sorts of French universities. How are they doing?
00:12Well, I thought I'd start with the good news and then we'll get into some of the issues of this
00:17rentrée universitaire or back-to-school week.
00:23In France, the good news is that French universities are doing pretty well from a global ranking standpoint.
00:28Of course, such rankings need to be taken with a grain of salt because they are not the end-all and be-all
00:33in a judge of quality of schools.
00:35But nonetheless, France currently has three universities in the top 50 of the Shanghai ranking list.
00:41They are Paris-Saclay, which comes in 12th. It has multiple Grandes Ecoles or France's most prestigious universities in it.
00:48Saclay was also ranked the world's top eight research clusters by Technology Review.
00:54Then coming in 33rd on the Shanghai list, we have PSL or the Paris Sciences and Letters University.
01:00And then of course the ever-famous Sorbonne. It is ranked 41st.
01:05If we stick with this global ranking, France has 18 universities in the top 500.
01:11Of course, this is far behind the United States, which has for decades made a name for itself internationally
01:17with 21% of the world's foreign students or 1.5 million people
01:22going to study in the U.S.
01:23But French and European universities, well, they're catching up.
01:26If we take business schools, for example, five out of ten of the top ones are in France according to the FT's ranking and
01:34the number of international students in French business schools, well, it has doubled in the past five years.
01:40Now, such recognition obviously helps to attract both French and international students.
01:46So why has this become so increasingly important?
01:50Well, the short answer is financing, but soft power politics and, of course, the transmission of knowledge.
01:56They're also at play here.
01:58In 2007, a law gave French universities more autonomy over their budgets.
02:02Critics of this move, they say that it actually has created a split between schools, between the haves and have-nots,
02:08and thus the have-and-have-nots of students as well.
02:11That the principle of égalité or an equal, affordable education for all has actually taken a hit here.
02:17And all of this comes in a rather bleak financial context for French public universities.
02:24Their provisional budget deficit is 4.5 billion euros this year.
02:29In February, the government cut 3 percent or over 900 million euros from its nearly 32 billion euro budget.
02:37A third of the state-owned university buildings are subpar and in need of major repairs.
02:43And on top of this, teaching jobs are increasingly being given out as vacataire work or as temporary stints
02:50because those guest lecture-like contracts, well, they cost about a fifth of the tenured track professor classes.
02:57These contracts are up 30 percent in the past seven years.
03:01So many say that these public service jobs, like those in hospitals, well, they're being squeezed and degraded.
03:06And those are concerns which are shared by academics across the world at the moment.
03:10But certainly some schools here in France are trying to attract foreign students to help the budget, aren't they?
03:15They are. This year, there are nearly three million enrolled university students in France.
03:20Of them, there are thought to be around 400,000 international students.
03:24The government hopes, with its so-called Bienvenue en France push, to bring that number up to 500,000 by 2027.
03:32Why? Well, foreign students pay higher fees, even if the public school fees in France are relatively small
03:38compared to other nations like the U.S. and the U.K.
03:41And once you remove the cost that the state pays for things like health care,
03:46well, these students bring in over a billion euros in economic spending overall.
03:52There's also a soft power element here.
03:53Foreign students, well, they become a relay of sorts of French values and knowledge when they return to their home countries,
04:00which some 80 percent of them do in the ten years following their studies.
04:05There is a political side to this as well.
04:06Restrictions that were part of Macron's immigration on foreign students, well, they have been scrapped.
04:12But it did create some questions among some about whether French foreign students feel welcome here in France.
04:17And you're talking there, Solange, about international students.
04:20What's the case for their French compatriots?
04:22Well, like many universities that are counting their pennies, so are students.
04:28For this school year, the entrance fees have increased by three percent,
04:31putting an end to a cap that was in place since 2019.
04:35According to FAGE, a main student group of associations, the average budget this year
04:41for the start of this year is 3,000 euros for the rentrée.
04:44And it's nearly double of that for foreign students.
04:47Now, the main challenge for students remains affordable housing.
04:51University housing only accounts for dorms, only account for a tiny fraction of student rooms.
04:58So many students are desperately searching for places.
05:01In September, it's a yearly thing.
05:03Some have even had to turn to Airbnbs, churches and their cars even because of the shortage of dorms.
05:09Now, with inflation, there's also increasingly a food problem for students.
05:12According to FAGE, this student association, some 19 percent say they don't have enough to eat.
05:18Since 2020, there has been a one euro per meal program in place for scholarship students, which helps.
05:25But there's also been an uptick of students going to soup kitchens as well,
05:29which is a sign that when it comes to boosting France's rankings on education, the basics like housing and food,
05:36well, they are also part of the bigger picture of investing in future generations.
05:41Indeed. Thank you so much, Solange Mejean, for that.

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