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Thursday, May 11, 2006
UD has already blogged your ear off… …about her semester teaching at the University of Toulouse a few years ago. Tomorrow’s New York Times updates the tale, in which a “fairly wealthy country” continues to subsidize - in a stingy way - an “archaic state-owned university system: overcrowded, underfinanced, disorganized and resistant to the changes demanded by the outside world.” …One result [of the ‘68 riots] was that the country's university system guaranteed a free — or almost free — college education to every high school graduate who passed the baccalauréat exam. University enrollment soared. The value of a bachelor's degree plummeted. …[T]he state failed to invest much in buildings, facilities and professors' salaries to make the system work. Today the French government allocates about $8,500 a year to each university student, about 40 percent less than what it invests in each high school student. |