France: Protests highlight cracks in decaying university system

PARIS - When Marie signed up last October to attend the Sorbonne, she brimmed with pride at entering France's most famous institution of arts and letters, an academy that can trace its roots to the 12th century. Today, the first-year student is about to throw in the towel.

She has had just four days of lectures since February. Her professors are on strike and the faculty, in the heart of Paris' Latin Quarter, is picketed by protesting students. Marie fears she has wasted an entire academic year, and when October comes around, she has her eye on changing course - and university.

"Lots of students are dispirited, completely at a loss," she says. "The situation is tough."

A third of French campuses have been gripped by strikes and occupations, pitching radical students against conservative head of state Nicolas Sarkozy.

At the protest's apogee, 28 universities were strikebound or occupied, and tens of thousands took part in rallies. There have been ugly confrontations, so far without casualties, between protesters and riot police called to remove barricades.

Today, the number of blockaded universities has dwindled to half a dozen as end-of-year exams loom a couple of weeks from now.

But tens of thousands are still unable to sit their exams, and many more wonder if they should even bother, as they are weeks behind on their course. Others fear any diploma for 2009 awarded by a strike-bound university could be dismissed as "bidon" - rubbish - by other colleges or employers.

France has 83 public universities but they typically languish near the bottom of international ratings of centres of higher education. With the exception of the "grandes ecoles" - a tiny elite of top schools - there has been a steady migration of the best talent to Britain and the US.

The universities' problems are many. They include the awarding of dud diplomas with little relevance in the job market. There are the unproductive professors, delivering listless lectures to overcrowded amphitheatres. There are the students adrift in a tutorless system, seeing out their time on soulless concrete campuses built in the 1970s.

The decline, gradual but now obvious, has called into question the egalitarian principles that underpin France's university system.

Under these, anyone who passes the baccalaureat (high school certificate) can go to university, universities have equal access to funds and fees are low. Tuition costs only €169 ($384) per year for undergraduate courses, and €226 to €342 for masters and PhDs.

Defenders of the system say equality and low cost open the door to people from poor backgrounds and contend the universities' real problems lie in chronic underfunding.

Critics agree resources are a problem but also say the universities are stifled by centralised bureaucracy and are packed with students with little interest or aptitude for their course. They also deplore the lack of a culture of excellence, with neither stick nor carrot to motivate professors on sinecures.

Under reforms promised by Sarkozy during his 2007 election campaign, university bosses will be given more autonomy to manage their staff, assess academics' research every four years to vet performance and tap the private sector for additional funds.

Dissenters say this will drive France towards a two-tier university system, driven by marketable degrees, corporate sponsorship and academic promotion or demotion according to the rector's whim.

But the movement has also tapped an old radical reflex, especially in the Sorbonne, which led the May 1968 student revolt.

To students there, Sarkozy - who views 1968 as the year that the rot set in - has orchestrated the confrontation.

The Government is taking a firm line, gambling on a backlash among what it contends is a majority of students fed up with a posturing minority, and swelling opposition among their parents.

The number of high school students signalling an intention to register at the most strike-hit universities for the next academic year has slumped by between 25 and 50 per cent over 2008, according to the Education Ministry.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon insists the Government will not accept lower standards in the year-end exams for students whose courses have been disrupted.

But he also says some exams could be rescheduled for September and, if necessary, held outside of campus.