With 2024 described because the “yr of elections”, management modifications and uncertainty had been evident throughout the globe. However nowhere was that uncertainty extra evident than in France, the place president Emmanuel Macron appointed his fourth prime minister of the year in December, after an ill-judged choice to name a snap common election led to political gridlock.
Amid such turmoil, management uncertainty at two Parisian universities would possibly look like small beer. But occasions at Paris-Saclay University and Paris Sciences et Lettres – PSL Research University Paris echoed past the 2 gigantic institutions, each fashioned by means of the difficult amalgamation of greater than 10 part establishments in pursuit of a rationalised and extra internationally seen French greater training sector.
At Paris-Saclay, the expiry of Estelle Iacona’s time period as president in March got here amid deep pressure over the set up of a brand new governing board. For the reason that board’s 36 members – who embrace representatives of the broader workers physique – elect the president, the wrangles compelled the postponement of the presidential election, obliging the college to nominate an interim president, generally known as a “provisional administrator”. Then, when the election did happen, Iacona – who was initially parachuted in to interchange Sylvie Retailleau when she grew to become greater training minister in 2022 – was unable to safe a majority.
Iacona then withdrew, prompting the provisional administrator, Camille Galap, to resign in an effort to throw his personal hat into the ring. The biologist, who has an intensive management background in French greater training, was elected president in June.
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Insiders advised that the difficulties mirrored a broader discontent regarding the formation of Paris-Saclay. Whereas the previous Paris-Sud University was fully subsumed by the brand new establishment in 2020, others among the many 15 constituent establishments and colleges maintained some autonomy, amongst them the schools of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and Évry Val d’Essonne and a number of grandes écoles. The educational communities inside every part have reportedly struggled to determine with the Paris-Saclay umbrella, with Le Monde describing the college’s current wrangles as being symptomatic of an establishment looking for a “soul”.
There have additionally been rumours of disagreements inside PSL’s part establishments. The college elected a brand new president final month, the economist and former Paris Dauphine University chief El Mouhoub Mouhoud, to take over from the late Alain Fuchs. The unexplained resignation of Fuchs final yr heightened scrutiny of the mega-university mission that created PSL and Paris-Saclay. Commentators questioned whether or not the top-down moulding of quite a few, ceaselessly disparate educating and analysis establishments into single “experimental public institutions” (EPEs) has actually allowed them to harness scale and synergy in such a method that makes the entire significantly larger than the sum of its components? Or whether or not they stay merged in identify solely: a bureaucratic ruse meant merely to spice up France’s efficiency in worldwide college rankings?
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Rankings are definitely not less than a part of the story, in accordance with Andrée Sursock, a senior adviser on the European University Affiliation (EUA). Whereas France’s college mergers had been pushed by greater than a need for worldwide acknowledgement, she says the nation’s relative invisibility within the first Tutorial Rating of World Universities (also called the Shanghai Rating) in 2003, “sounded an alarm bell, and France determined to do one thing about it”.
No French establishments appeared within the prime 50; the very best ranked, in sixty fifth place, was Pierre and Marie Curie University (now a part of Sorbonne University).
It was an analogous story in Instances Larger Schooling’s World College Rankings. In 2017, previous to the institution of EPEs the next yr, France’s highest ranked establishment, École Normale Supérieure (now a part of PSL), was 66th. Subsequent, at joint 116th, was École Polytechnique (now a part of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris, an amalgamation of six engineering grandes écoles on the Saclay website that had been initially a part of Paris-Saclay). Aside from Pierre and Marie Curie at joint 121st and Paris-Sud University (now a part of Paris-Saclay) at 179th, there have been no different French establishments within the prime 200.
Central to France’s lack of worldwide visibility, sector leaders perceived, was the number of establishments partaking – typically individually – in greater training and analysis, a definite set-up that eluded straightforward worldwide comparability. Alongside universities, the sector was – and nonetheless is – populated by extremely selective grandes écoles, thought-about a pathway to prime positions in enterprise or politics however whose lack of analysis exercise excludes them from world rankings. In the meantime, a posh community of analysis organisations conduct a lot of France’s greatest analysis however, since they do no undergraduate educating, are additionally ineligible for rankings.
In the beginning of this century, in the meantime, complete establishments had been unusual: many French cities hosted a number of smaller universities, typically discipline-specific. The federal government pledged to deal with this “fragmentation” of the panorama, and a sequence of initiatives have adopted, all geared toward varied types of institutional amalgamation. “The strategy to build up a world-class college by selling mergers amongst present establishments has been diligently pursued by France,” says Saeed Paivandi, professor within the sociology of training on the University of Lorraine. “The development website of French greater training has remained open for many years.”
In 2006, through a brand new legislation on analysis, then president Nicolas Sarkozy launched the pôles de recherche et d’enseignement supérieur (analysis and better training centres), a type of consortium geared toward “pooling the actions and sources” of universities, grandes écoles and analysis establishments. A PRES didn’t represent a merger, however required larger cooperation amongst its members, with part establishments inspired to switch some competences to the extent of the consortium.
Then, in 2013, throughout François Hollande’s presidency, the PRES construction was changed by the same communauté d’universités et établissements (communities of universities and institutions), or ComUE. As with a PRES, it was hoped {that a} ComUE would encourage “enhanced coordination of coaching and analysis insurance policies”, says Paivandi, with the grouping regularly merging right into a single establishment over time. What developed as a substitute, in lots of cases, was a “weak and floating alliance between institutions inside the identical territory”, Paivandi says.
The ComUE construction was “by no means very fashionable”, says the EUA’s Sursock. Many had been “shotgun marriages” and few constituent establishments had been prepared to switch competences to the ComUE stage. Therefore, at present, ComUEs are “on their method out”. In 2016, 20 such communities existed; at present, solely 5 stay. That determine will quickly drop to 4, with the Federal University of Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées starting a transition to an EPE structure.
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Alongside the institutional rearrangements got here an excellence initiative, the Initiatives d’Excellence (Idex) programme, launched by Sarkozy in 2010 with a €10.3 billion (£8.5 billion) finances. This noticed funding injected into complete universities deemed to excel in analysis, educating, governance, innovation and worldwide relations, amongst different standards. The sister ISITE programme, in the meantime, rewarded excellence at specialised, regional universities.
The Idex programme didn’t explicitly mandate that universities merge, says the sociologist Christine Musselin, a CNRS analysis professor at Sciences Po and an professional in college governance. However, all three of the establishments chosen within the first name – Strasbourg, Bordeaux and PSL – had both already merged, had been within the technique of doing so, or had pledged to grow to be extra built-in. “My interpretation is that when the second Idex name was launched, lots of the candidates understood that they need to merge, or say they’d merge,” Musselin says. “And so a form of merger mania began.”
By 2022, an international panel of experts had confirmed nine Idex universities – amongst them the schools of Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Aix-Marseille, Paris Saclay and PSL – and eight I-SITEs, together with the schools of Nantes, Lille, Montpellier and Clermont Auvergne.
For the University of Strasbourg, the method of mixing Louis Pasteur College, Marc Bloch College and Robert Schuman College, in 2009, into one establishment was “comparatively straightforward”, says rector Michel Deneken, who was a vice-president on the time. In different mergers, although, he concedes that “issues had been way more tough”, pointing to establishments unfold throughout a number of cities, similar to Aix-Marseille University, or establishments that needed to mix a number of departments providing the identical topics.
“We had lengthy been accustomed to managing the widespread campus of the three founding universities, and we had no duplicate colleges to cope with,” he says. But points remained. “There was the concern of shedding an identification, the concern of a college of uncontrollable and inhuman measurement,” says Deneken. “There was additionally apprehension that one of many three universities would take priority over the others: specifically, the college devoted to science, know-how and well being. The college devoted to the human sciences was very afraid, for its half, of not being recognised for its specificity and legitimacy.”
However, the advantages of mixing the schools had been apparent. “Internationally, three universities in the identical metropolis was unreadable, whereas in most international locations the schools had been bigger and higher recognized,” Deneken says. “Changing into a big, complete college supplied an important leverage for our attractiveness and our quest for excellence.”
Representatives of the area can extra efficiently promote one united establishment, whereas worldwide communication is simpler now Strasbourg “solely has one model to put on”, he says. In the meantime, the merger has enabled the college to ascertain “interdisciplinary thematic institutes, which higher anchor the tradition of a big, complete college”.
Certainly, larger interdisciplinarity is a generally cited motive for French college mergers. Barthelemy Jobert, president of the Sorbonne University Basis, led Paris-Sorbonne University on the time of its merger with Pierre and Marie Curie University in 2017 to kind Sorbonne University. He describes the inspiration for the merger as “the potential for mixing excellence in all fields”. New “responsive” centres at Sorbonne University, in fields together with synthetic intelligence, robotics and the environmental transition, had been made doable, Jobert says, as had been cross-disciplinary doctoral fellowships in broad areas, similar to gender research.
Sciences Po’s Musselin, too, references “the thought of an entire college” as the motive force behind many mergers, though she characterises as a “fantasy” the thought “that you probably have completely different disciplines, they may work collectively…We all know many, many universities on this planet which have all of the disciplines. That doesn’t imply that they’re working ‘interdisciplinarily’.”
What the Sorbonne, Strasbourg, Aix-Marseille and Bordeaux mergers all shared, nevertheless – and what Paris-Saclay and PSL lacked – was the relative simplicity of mixing a number of establishments of the identical sort.
Combining universities, grandes écoles, universities and analysis establishments is difficult by vital variations in governance, admissions and social standing. As an example, whereas each applicant with a baccalauréat, or secondary faculty diploma, can enrol in college, admission to a grande école usually requires a number of years of preparation for a extremely aggressive entrance examination.
And whereas grandes écoles are normally managed by appointed administrators, universities elect their presidents. The previous, due to this fact, could also be “reluctant to be included into what they see as an quaint and too politicised form of [institution]”, says Jean-Marc Rapp, rector emeritus on the University of Lausanne and chair of the Idex jury.
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What’s extra, many grandes écoles concern the lack of the status that French society affords them ought to they merge with a college. “They supply a quick observe right into a social class,” says the neuroscientist and Idex jury member Richard Frackowiak.
To Frackowiak, former scientific adviser on the nationwide analysis organisation Inserm, that’s a concern the grandes écoles should overcome if French greater training is to fulfil its potential. “I believe they want to enter the schools as postgraduate institutes,” he tells THE. “You then’d have a particularly highly effective greater training system, able to competing with the likes of the UK and Germany.”
After initially favouring the ComUE construction, the Macron French authorities, impressed by the success of varied full mergers, started to favour that mannequin. Nevertheless, “within the technique of pushing these mergers of the grandes écoles and the schools, and seeing that a few of them had been considerably challenged, [the government then] determined that they shouldn’t be insisting that the grandes écoles lose their authorized standing as a situation of a merger,” says the EUA’s Sursock. The outcome was the 2018 legislation establishing EPEs. By the tip of 2023, 16 had been created, amongst them PSL, Paris-Saclay, Grenoble-Alpes, Montpellier, Lille and Nantes.
The EPE mannequin “has introduced a little bit of oxygen to the system”, says Sursock. “It has allowed a few of these groupings of universities and grandes écoles to be introduced collectively whereas leaving some autonomy to the completely different elements, and that eliminated lots of the causes for pressure and conflicts.”
Establishments with EPE standing are extra intently interwoven than these fashioned as a PRES or ComUE, which had been criticised for his or her instability, and will incorporate each private and non-private entities. In contrast to with full mergers, nevertheless, the part components can nonetheless preserve their very own authorized identities. For a most of 10 years, EPEs might “experiment with new modes of group and operation in compliance with the targets and missions of upper training”, in accordance with the federal government, earlier than transitioning right into a extra everlasting authorized standing.
One prerequisite for EPEs is that they’d – like ComUEs – be eligible for worldwide rankings. PSL made its much-heralded debut in THE’s World College Rankings in 2018, in joint 72nd place; it positioned within the prime 50 the next yr (forty first), the place it has remained yearly since. Within the newest THE rankings, 4 French universities seem within the prime 100. Three are EPEs – PSL at 42, Paris-Saclay at 64 and Institut Polytechnique de Paris at 71 – whereas the totally merged Sorbonne University is at 76.
Whereas a college’s success can’t be measured by rankings alone, Jennifer Heurley, PSL’s vice-rector for worldwide relations, says a powerful efficiency is “essential” for recruitment of worldwide college students. “Rankings are a key reference level for college kids worldwide when making educational choices,” she says. And Rapp provides that they are often central to attracting educational expertise, too, with early-career researchers utilizing them to tell their subsequent steps.
Nonetheless, not all are satisfied by the EPE and the cautious distance many grandes écoles preserve inside them. The Sorbonne College Basis’s Jobert places it bluntly: “In comparison with Sorbonne University, with one president, one board, one finances and one signature, PSL shouldn’t be actually a college. Paris-Saclay shouldn’t be actually a college.” As a substitute, he says, they’re “roughly a group” of “unbiased faculties or varied establishments”. And he agrees that the management turbulence each universities endured this yr might mirror their wrestle “to be one establishment, and never solely a coalition of pursuits”.
In Rapp’s view, “The most effective resolution could be to have a full integration of [grandes écoles] into these universities of excellence”. And he says his opinion is shared by different Idex jury members: “It’s significantly better to be clearly a part of a college with one employer, with one technique.”
Harvard Enterprise Faculty is usually cited for instance of a part establishment that’s built-in right into a college whereas sustaining its personal branding and autonomy. “It’s completely doable to have each,” Rapp says. Harvard Enterprise Faculty “resides within the college; it could actually reap the benefits of different colleges and different disciplines”.
“In a traditional college like mine [Lausanne], you do analysis, you do educating, you do innovation – you do three issues,” he continues. “For those who change your actions, you focus on it with one employer.” In an EPE comprising universities, grandes écoles and analysis organisations, hundreds of workers might have completely different employers, complicating collaboration between the elements. “Are you able to think about the complexity of the state of affairs?” he asks.
Merging underneath one institutional identification, Jobert says, grants a college a sure dynamism. EPEs, he asserts, “could also be much less environment friendly than we’re: much less environment friendly in analysis, much less environment friendly in educating, and…much less environment friendly in [establishing] the place of their establishments on this planet” 10 years down the road.
A merged establishment facilitates worldwide collaboration, he provides: “It’s more easy for us to talk to Cambridge, Heidelberg, Yale or Harvard as a result of we have now the identical construction and the identical identification.”
Begin a dialog about college mergers in France and also you’ll hear the phrase “identification” talked about quite a bit. Even the merged Sorbonne University, Jobert says, has but to wholly shed the reminiscence of the establishments that got here earlier than. “Lots of people come to me and say, ‘I need to do a grasp or a doctorate with you at Paris IV’ [an alternative name for the former Paris-Sorbonne University,” he says. “And I say to them, ‘Paris IV disappeared seven years ago. So if you want to do a master’s or a doctorate with Professor Jobert, it’s in Sorbonne University.’”
Other times, students can surprise with their prompt embrace of a new institutional identity. Back in 2009, Sciences Po’s Musselin recalls, the president of the newly merged University of Strasbourg seemed unusually cheery amid the higher education strikes that saw thousands of students and academics protest in the streets. “He told me that he was very happy because he saw that the students, when they were demonstrating in the street, had flags reading ‘University of Strasbourg’,” she says. “They had already [absorbed] the truth that they had been all collectively two months after the merger.”
However what of the bigger, extra disparate conglomerations? Within the case of Paris-Saclay, its new president conceded upon taking workplace that implementing his concepts for the establishment throughout his four-year time period “would require a substantial quantity of funding and motivation on my behalf, and specifically, will name on my means to rally and unite all the college’s stakeholders.”
PSL is a little bit additional down that observe, having, in 2022, grow to be the primary of the EPEs to exit its “experimental interval” and transition right into a grand établissement – a everlasting authorized standing. In a press launch, Fuchs mentioned the college had “reached a full diploma of institutional maturity”, describing its mannequin as “that of a collegiate college, broadly recognised internationally however hitherto overseas to France.”
Underneath this mannequin, Fuchs mentioned, “the part establishments retain a excessive diploma of autonomy, whereas the college units your entire technique, determines the budgetary pointers, gives a single coaching provide and takes cost of the widespread definition of high quality requirements and their management.”
PSL’s transformation right into a grand établissement was made doable, vice-rector Heurley says, as a result of PSL “established a deep sense of collective imaginative and prescient, constructed a story, applied a transparent and balanced decision-making course of, centered on including worth and setting deliverable targets throughout completely different timescales”.
This yr [2025], she provides, the establishment will launch 14 main “strategic analysis programmes”, demonstrative of its “dedication to scientific excellence” and notable for his or her “interdisciplinarity, worldwide visibility, educational influence and illustration of the sciences, arts and humanities”.
However the success of EPEs won’t be judged solely on the premise of shared analysis tasks. For Sciences Po’s Musselin, the important thing measure of success can be “extra convergence between their constituent universities and the grandes écoles…The cultures are so completely different between them, and I believe one can say that an EPE is admittedly succeeding if they’ll overcome these challenges.”
Simply six years since EPEs had been based, nevertheless, she agrees with most specialists that it’s nonetheless too early to achieve a verdict.
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“Even in companies, mergers want about 10 years to essentially be applied,” she says. “Will probably be a really good course of to check in possibly 5 or 6 years.”
