May 14, 2006

THERE are 32,000 students at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris, but no student center, no bookstore, no student-run newspaper, no freshman orientation, no corporate recruiting system. Nanterre is where the French student revolt of 1968 broke out.

The 480,000-volume central library is open only 10 hours a day, closed on Sundays and holidays. Only 30 of the library’s 100 computers have Internet access. The campus cafeterias close after lunch. Professors often do not have office hours; many have no office. Some classrooms are so overcrowded that at exam time many students have to find seats elsewhere. By late afternoon every day the campus is largely empty.

Sandwiched between a prison and an unemployment office just outside Paris, the university here is neither the best nor the worst place to study in this fairly wealthy country. Rather, it reflects the crisis of France’s archaic state-owned university system: overcrowded, underfinanced, disorganized and resistant to the changes demanded by the outside world.

“In the United States, the university system is one of the drivers of American prosperity,” said Claude Allhgre, a former education minister who tried without success to reform French universities. “But here, we simply don’t invest enough. Universities are poor. They’re not a priority either for the state or the private sector. If we don’t reverse this trend, we will kill the new generation.”

It was student discontent on campuses across France that fired up the recent protests against a law that would have made it easier for employers to dismiss young workers. College students were driven by fear that their education was worth little and that after graduation they would not find jobs.

The protests closed or disrupted a majority of France’s universities for weeks, labor unions declared solidarity and eventually the government was forced to withdraw the law.

The problems stem in part from the student revolts of May 1968, which grew out of an unexceptional event at Nanterre the year before. One March evening, male students protesting the sexual segregation of the dormitories occupied the women’s dormitory and were evicted by the police.

A year later, Nanterre students protesting the war in Vietnam occupied the administration building, the first such action by students at a French university. The student revolt spread, turning into a mass movement aimed at transforming the authoritarian, elitist French system of governance. Ultimately 10 million workers left their jobs in a strike that came close to forcing de Gaulle from power.

One result was that the country’s university system guaranteed a free — or almost free — college education to every high school graduate who passed the baccalauriat exam. University enrollment soared. The value of a bachelor’s degree plummeted.

But the state failed to invest much in buildings, facilities and professors’ salaries to make the system work. Today the French government allocates about 8,500 dollars a year to each university student, about 40 per cent less than what it invests in each high school student.

Most students are required to attend the universities closest to their high schools. Although certain universities excel in specific fields of study, the course offerings in, say, history or literature are generally the same throughout the country.

Only four percent of French students make it into the most competitive French universities — the public “grandes ecoles.” But the grandes ecoles, along with a swath of semiprivate preparatory schools, absorb 30 per cent of the public budget. They are well-organized, well-equipped, overwhelmingly white and upper middle class, and infused with the certainty that their graduates will take the best jobs in government and the private sector. Students are even paid to attend. Tuition is about 250 dollars a year, hardly a sufficient source of income for colleges.

But asking the French to pay more of their way in college seems out of the question. When the government proposed a reform in 2003 to streamline curriculums and budgets by allowing each university more flexibility and independence, students and professors rebelled. They saw the initiative as a step toward privatization of higher education that they feared would lead to higher fees and threaten the universal right of high school graduates to a college education. The government backed down.

Professors lack the standing and the salaries of the private sector. A starting instructor can earn less than 20,000 dollars a year; the most senior professor in France earns about 75,000 dollars a year. Because students generally are required to attend the university closest to home, most do not live on campus.

At Nanterre, for example, there are only 1,050 dormitory rooms and a long waiting list. The amenities are few. Twenty-two students share three toilets, three showers and a small kitchen furnished with only a sink and a few electric burners.—Dawn/NYT Service

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