PARIS: The ugly concrete campus of Paris 6 university is dominated by a tower that has been a building site for 11 years as asbestos is removed. Nobody seems to be able to pinpoint when the work will finish.

The government tried to brighten the dreary site with a modernistic red and yellow science building but forgot to put in air conditioning, a mistake because the laboratory machines heat up to temperatures that damage the research.

For Paris 6 President Jean-Charles Pomerol these problems sum up the main weakness of France’s crumbling universities, the focus of a reform bill discussed in cabinet on Wednesday.

“The state is the project manager,” he said. “The state treats us like children and doesn’t ask us what we need.”

France’s 85 universities are struggling. They have slipped down international league tables, many are overcrowded, lacking funds and facilities and losing their best staff to better paid jobs in the United States or elsewhere.

What is more, France’s brightest students are desperate to get into the Grandes Ecoles, a group of small, prestigious, highly selective higher education institutions.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to tackle the problem.

“Why are the only attractive campuses abroad? Why are our university libraries shut on Sunday? Why are there no sports or cultural spaces? Why do families who can afford it, send their children to universities abroad?” he said recently.

He wants to push through a reform this summer that will give universities greater independence to make them more competitive and put French universities back on the world map.

CASH AND INDEPEDENCE: Paris 6, also known as Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, was the best placed French university in the 2006 Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings, based on research.