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News

French university funding reform faces renewed opposition[fr]

Published: Tuesday 24 June 2008

French proposals to reform the country's university funding by introducing a more performance-oriented approach have attracted renewed opposition among students.

Background:

In May 2006, the Commission issued a communication making detailed recommendations on how to modernise higher education in Europe. In its most contested suggestion, the report urged member states to give universities more autonomy and accountability and encouraged governments to "open up [universities] to the business community".

A French law to implement EU recommendations on reforming higher education was presented on 24 May 2007 (EurActiv 08/06/07) and adopted by the French Parliament in August 2007. The law, set to be implemented over the next five years, will:

Give French universities more autonomy to decide upon their budget and staff (by creating foundations to collect money and devise their own recruitment processes), and;
enable universities to open their administration to external staff, allowing representatives of the business world to take part in university governance.

The French plan has encountered opposition from students and university staff (EurActiv 05/11/07), who argue that such a law implies financial and political disengagement by the state and brings with it the threat of privatisation.

Other related news:

On 10 June 2008, the French Senate published a report proposing changes to the current French university funding system, criticised for its opacity and complexity.

Drafted at the request of French Research and Higher Education Minister Valérie Pécresse, the report recommends basing university funding more on universities' performance rather than on the number of registered students. Indeed, the current system pushes universities to enrol more first-year students than they can handle to ensure cash flow.

To end this, the senators' report recommends increasing performance-related funding for research from the current 20% to 30% by 2009 and up to 50% in the long term. As for teaching, performance-related support would be increased from 3% to 10%.

To evaluate performance, senators recommend using several criteria including the amount of outside funding attracted by university research laboratories, namely business sources.

Another criterion could be to evaluate employment and salary levels of students graduated from different universities at intervals of six months and three years, as well as to allocate university funding on the basis of the number of students actually taking exams rather than the number of registered ones.

Positions:

The Senate's recommendations triggered strong opposition from the French national student union (UNEF), which argues that performance-related funding would lead to more inequalities between universities and penalise those that need help most.

The union argues that cutting funding for those most in need will not help resolve huge rates of failure among students. On the contrary, UNEF argues that the funds for universities recording huge failure rates need to be increased to help them implement more ambitious policies.

EU Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik has stressed the importance of giving more autonomy to European universities, especially in areas like research, innovation, and knowledge transfer missions. Earlier this spring, during a colloquium of the French Conference of University Presidents, he welcomed France's will to modernise its higher education system, describing the French university reform as "an example to Europe as a whole".