French Higher Education

French higher education is good, especially the Grandes Ecoles. That is normal since they get 30 percent of the budget for 5 percent of the students. The elite that makes it into the Grandes Ecoles, after passing entrance exams, is very well trained.

There are various problems with the present system. Since the entrance exams are very competitive and extremely important for the future careers and lives of the students, children need to be prepared to have very high problem solving capabilities at eighteen. That requires that children enter very good schools at an early age. That jeopardizes the otherwise democratic nature of the entrance exams. The influence of the direct environment on the children's far future is big.

The Grandes Ecoles are separated. They are not universal (as universities are) in that they usually have a single department with a single vocation (e.g. electrical engineering). That compartmentalizes the elite and makes for little cross-discipline and cross-professional fertilization. That takes its toll on the flexibility and creativity of French administration, technology, research and industry, etcetera.

The university students (which remain an important resource of talent) suffer badly from the fact that the head of the student body is chopped of by the Grandes Ecoles. The university degree is devalued in the presence of the close knit Grande Ecole elite.

Long term the only solution that one can envisage is the joining of Grandes Ecoles to form elite universities within France. Or the joining of Grandes Ecoles to universities in such a way that they retain their exceptional quality.

Grandes Ecoles cannot disappear since they are of the highest level. They must however allow their elite students to communicate more freely with students from other domains, and they may take the task of leading the whole of the French higher education body closer at heart. Universities should aspire to cooperate and compete with the Grandes Ecoles, with the conviction that they are expected to find talent in numbers, or in latebloomers or disadvantaged youngsters.

These are changes that can only be implemented gradually and in the long term, through careful and informed planning, by both the higher education community and central administration. There is no easy changing of more than 200 years of impressive history.