France profonde

France's two-tier university system contributes to the country's stagnation. The graduates of the grandes écoles are at last starting to tackle this
July 21, 2006

Early summer in France sees anxious sixth formers and their more anxious parents wondering about the future as they wait for the results of this year's baccalauréat. But here, unlike in Britain with its A-levels, the waiting is not accompanied by agonised family discussions about which university. Come September, nine out of ten French baccalaureates will simply shuffle along to the university nearest home. In France there is no selection for a place at university any more than there is at school: anyone with the bac can have a stab at any subject—in theory, a beautiful and generous public service that offers equality for all. The weeding-out process comes with the first-year exams. Half the undergraduates will fail and have to rethink their future—in medicine, only one in ten pass. A waste, perhaps, but at least they have been allowed to try and there's nothing to stop them enrolling in another subject next year—it's all free. Except that many students complain that, with no support from the remote teaching staff, they are left alone to fend for themselves.

French universities spurn contact with industry and do not encourage research, so the undergraduate experience gives only an illusion of progress. Most courses equip students to teach, but since there are few teaching jobs, most humanities graduates end up doing something else or out of work. Some stay on to do postgraduate degrees, but it doesn't get any better: of those awarded an MA or doctorate in 2003, a quarter are now in a job for life, a quarter on short contracts and half are on the dole. The overwhelming despair of those wasted years is what drove students on to the streets earlier this year. Limiting entry by pre-selection might seem the obvious remedy, but any mention is howled down as un-republican. Overcrowded, underfunded, French provincial universities are where you go if you can't do better.

For those who can do better, however, there is an alternative. School-leavers with an average of 85 per cent in their bac, who have been to a good lycée and whose parents can afford to support them, can consider a two-year preparation course for the fierce entry exams to a grande école. Held in awe by all French people, these somewhat mythic places are the opposite of the universities: highly selective, they seek only the best and all but guarantee their graduates not only jobs for life, but the best paid and most prestigious ones. Their existence alongside the universities somehow epitomises that delicate blend of egalitarianism and elitism that makes France so special.

Because the process of getting into a grande école is long and arduous, most applicants for the preparation courses come from France's brightest families, with the inevitable consequence that the grandes écoles themselves are bastions of the bourgeoisie, la crème de la crème. Very few students from less privileged backgrounds even bother to apply. That is changing slowly. Sciences Po has pioneered agreements with a few lycées in deprived areas to recommend their best pupils. In 2005, 57 were admitted. This September, the most prestigious Parisian lycée, Henri IV, is taking 30 baccalaureates from "socially modest origins," not to integrate them into the preparation course, but to bring them up to scratch to apply for next year's.

There are three types of classe prépa, to match the three types of grande école: commerce, science and humanities (lettres). In reality, what you study at a grande école matters less than the fact of having been there, for their aim is to teach you how to organise ideas and present them coherently—the qualities employers are looking for. It is the method, not the matter which is important. That method is maths-based—indeed, ability at maths is central to all French education; a medical student, for example, won't qualify if bad at maths. But maths problems have only two outcomes: right or wrong. Some question whether this binary mindset is still suitable for the more subtle problems in the world today.

Even the French find it hard to define a grande école. There are 250 écoles scientifiques, but only a handful are considered grandes—principally the Polytechnique, dependent on the ministry of defence. For humanities, there are only four schools, the eccentrically named écoles normales superieures, all extremely grande. There are 13 Sciences Po (Institut d'Etudes Politiques)—the graduates of the Paris branch being world-famous for their grandeur. The infamous Ecole nationale d'administration (ENA) is in a class apart: directly supervised by the prime minister's office, it is a postgraduate institution, and even to be considered for the year's preparation for ENA, you need either two university degrees or one grande école degree. Six out of seven of the—by definition—brilliant and experienced applicants will fail the written entry exam, and half the rest will fail the battery of orals. Only about 100 a year get though. This distillation of the already privileged to produce the ruling elite has been criticised for breeding uniformity and sterility at the top, and some of the brightest graduates of the system now recognise this. The souring of the cream, and how they hope to change France, will be the theme of next month's column.