France University System

Crisis and Reforms

Abstract

During the last century, the French university system has faced historical circumstances of great transcendence, it has suffered deep transformations on many levels (demographic, administrative, legal, social, economic) and it has been victim of what seems to be and endless loop: advertised reforms, empty promises and short-term changing projects which don’t provide any answers neither to the complexity nor to the needs of an educational system in clear disadvantage regarding two parallel systems of higher education: the Grandes Écoles and the professional courses of shorter lengths. Nowadays, the French university is not only confronting an increasing number of students, but also the consequences of the pandemic, the lost of a clear horizon within its intellectual and scientific functions, the worrying unemployment rates for young people, the dropping value of its social image, and the economic measures of governments interested in reducing their load of financial obligations. This article wants to take us on a historical journey about the latest great transformations of the French university system, as well as trying to find explanations for what looks like an endemic problem that longs to get solved in order to cure the disease endangering the project of a republican university.