“Autonomy is the disengagement of the state from the university,” she says, calling the results of the first wave [of university changes] disastrous:
“This is creating a lot of competition between colleagues, some of whom are now having to teach much more, and others who are having to do more research, and it is creating a lot of inequality.”
As the French university system attempts to become respectable, a professor at the University of Bourgogne, and a spokesperson for the main group resisting the changes, captures the source of faculty anger. Pretty much everybody has to work now. Plus, their work is being judged.
June 6th, 2010 at 11:02AM
The commentary here doesn’t sound like any French academic I know. In general, they work far harder for far less money in far worse conditions than any American professor I know. The service (departments have no support or administrative staff, so faculty do everything from admissions to scheduling to approving transcripts from transfer students), expense (departments have no office budget, no supply closet, many not even a photocopier, so everything except chalk comes out of the teacher’s pocket), and teaching conditions (overcrowded classrooms in crumbling buildings–I taught in a trailer, myself; illiterate and disenfranchised students; no faculty offices for meeting students–you do that in a coffee shop or your own living room) of the average French university faculty member is pretty much unimaginable to those of us sitting pretty on American campuses. The experience and daily conditions of instructors even at some of the more famous French university campuses are closer to those of an urban public school teacher (minus the metal detectors) than a university faculty member in the US.
As for research, at least in the humanities, outside of the topmost elite institutions (the grandes écoles) and few privileged super-stars, there are no funds or support for research, so all that comes out of pocket, also. And this “judging” of research work? Basically counting published pages, like the British RAE, so out with the well-researched, time-consuming book-length studies, and in with the flood of conference proceedings, quickie-turnaround journal articles, etc.
I think you’re also missing the point in Chambaz’s comment: the issue is not that individuals will do more work, it’s that their work will be redistributed in an unequal way. Those in campuses or departments selected for “excellence” will do more research and less teaching, while those at institutions not selected for “excellence” will do more teaching and less research. You can imagine which of these changes will actually entail more hours and which more rewards.
There are other issues at play here, particularly involving faculty governance which is stronger than in the United States for the most part, and some of the resistance is certainly a corporate defense of privilege (university staff are public employees after all). But please don’t underestimate the extent of the “cultural revolution” that Sarkozy is trying to effect, or the power of the egalitarianism that has obtained in French universities since May ’68. These faculty are not just whiners, and respectability for the few chosen campuses will not be the only outcome–there may be big winners, but there will also be big losers in these reforms.
June 6th, 2010 at 12:06PM
Oddly, I know this person, and she is a conscienscious and serious scholar. I would be wary about attributing too much importance to an out-of-context quote. While the previous poster misattributes the source of the quote (it is Laurence Giavarini, not Chambaz), s/he has an important point: the focus of these comments seems to be upon *equity* and *fairness*, rather than upon working *more* or being *judged*.
The French system is not perfect, but depicting its faculty as lazy and narrow-minded is unfair. The real difference with the US system lies in the latter’s large-scale entrepreneurial and corporate character. We might ponder how well this model (with its exorbitant tuition and focus on partnerships with corporate America) has served American students…
June 6th, 2010 at 12:11PM
Hi Ellie: I taught for a semester at Toulouse Mirail, and presented papers at several others, and have I think a pretty good sense of what’s going on in many French universities — those outside the established elite few.
I disagree with your analysis.
I don’t disagree, of course, that working conditions for most French professors are appalling. Campuses are demoralizingly shabby, etc.. You don’t say in your comment why that is. It is because the French refusal to control admissions and standards — the French romance with what they take to be egalitarianism, but which is in fact oligarchy, with the few elite places, again, sitting pretty, and most of the rest sitting in shit — that romance is not yet over.
They want to be under the thumb of a stingy state. Imagine. They organize themselves into vast public demonstrations when the state looks as though it will change these degrading conditions by granting the universities autonomy.
You can either interpret this resistance to change psychologically – the French university structure as such is mass masochism – or you can interpret it the way I do. Working conditions may be shit, but it’s a nice comfy not too stinky shit in which no one has to do much. Hence the Shanghai and other rankings. Of course the French get all ’68 about it and tell you it’s about educating everyone, that free university education is a universal right, etc. But this is to my mind the rankest cynicism, since the system outside the elite schools isn’t educating anyone very well or producing particularly impressive research. It’s corrupt and lazy and demoralized – the way you get after decades of sitting around expecting handouts.
As to work being distributed in an unequal way — and…? We have teaching colleges here in the US — are they less rewarding than primarily research institutions? Maybe some. But plenty are arguably more attractive than research-minded places, for all sorts of good reasons.
I don’t at all underestimate the Sarkozy cultural revolution, as you call it. (I wouldn’t call it that — I think calling it that plays into the hysteria among professors and students there. Why not just call it reform? Lots of other countries – Poland, for instance – are doing pretty much exactly what the French government is trying to do, but they’re not screaming that it’s a cultural revolution. If you just call it reform, though, it ceases to be a big scary cultural revolution that justifies mass demonstrations.) And I certainly don’t underestimate the foul mendacity that the proud French tradition of equality has turned into.
If you want to see the endpoint of holding onto state-slave university systems, look at Greece. That’s where France is headed.
June 6th, 2010 at 12:34PM
FrogProf: Well, we need to clarify what we’re talking about here. The French government is responding primarily to international rankings of universities. These rankings are mainly based on quality of research, and research productivity. If you want to compare US and French universities in the way the French government (and the world) is comparing them, you need to do so primarily in terms of the intellectual activity of the country’s professors. The lists demonstrate that France is doing very badly in this regard – especially given its proud intellectual tradition.
Of course there is a relationship between the research productivity of a country’s university system generally, and how well the university system serves its students. In France, there are three or four very good research and teaching universities; in the US there are, let’s say, around fifty. Under those fifty there are probably another fifty good or pretty good research and teaching universities. There are also many very good colleges in the US, schools primarily about teaching (though even there faculty is typically expected to be reasonably research-productive).
How well are they serving their students? Well, this blog, University Diaries, is certainly in part about the ways in which universities fail to serve their students. But if you read this blog with care, you’ll note that it’s also about a real appreciation of the ways in which many American universities and colleges do, on balance, a remarkably good job of educating their students. When I complain about sports and technology and high tuition and hoarded endowments, I do so in the belief that these things can change. They can change because even public American universities have remarkable levels of autonomy and freedom. They are able to respond to pressure – internal and external – toward institutional change. The French system lacks this flexibility.
A crucial reason American universities, for all their faults, lead the world involves a culture of competition. Universities compete with one another for students, for government funds, for public attention. If you consider any form of competitiveness the ugly face of predatory capitalism, you’re obviously not going to get anywhere. You’ll simply dismiss evils like the Shanghai list and settle back into your comfy chair.
June 6th, 2010 at 1:16PM
Here’s a professor who deserves UD attention:
“he seems to be a very nice man…when he keeps his zipper up”
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Indecent+exposure%3a+UNH+should+stop+it&articleId=b74f1cd8-01d1-465d-b431-411601642cf8
June 6th, 2010 at 1:28PM
As part of its goal of fostering a competitive, results-oriented outlook, the government has tied its allocations of public money more closely to institutional performance. It is also encouraging universities to pursue external sources of income.
“We have had to change our mentality to work more closely with private companies,” says Vincent Lamande […]
Universities are also involved in the creation of start-up companies, he says, and are setting up private foundations, often in partnership with industry.
More results-oriented outlook, measuring impact on society, partnership with industry, all strike me as the beginning of less humanistic inquiry. With such obvious imitation of the Anglo-Saxon model, revenue generating athletic programs will soon be on their way, n’est-ce pas? Trading a corrupt Gallic system for a corrupt Anglo-Saxon model doesn’t sound like much of a solution.
June 6th, 2010 at 3:05PM
Thanks, a reader. You’re right. This is just the sort of thing that deserves UD attention.
June 6th, 2010 at 6:16PM
Look, I’m not denying that the French system has problems. But as long as we’re being “clear about what we’re talking about,” let’s take a hard look at the reasons why France fares poorly in ratings of international universities. One of the main reasons is that much of the research in France is under the aegis not of the universities, but of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. To some extent, in other words, this is not a productivity problem, it’s a *metrics* problem. (The CNRS, by the way, is ranked as the #1 research center in Europe.) There may be good reasons to dissolve the CNRS and hand over research to the universities, but a good deal of this “reform” is simply a question of musical chairs: the idea is to shift more of the research to the university’s books, thereby boosting their ratings. But the cost is a good deal of unnecessary disruption. (The US, similarly, could raise the profile of its top universities by dissolving NASA, the NIH, and NOAA and handing over its research portfolios to them.)
As for the “cultural revolution” remark, that is a pretty accurate way of describing the way in which Sarkozy has been addressing the real problems of the French Universities: heavy-handed decrees and a lot of hot air, with some anti-humanistic bluster thrown in. I agree that the French universities are long overdue for reform, but I have serious doubts as to whether Sarkozy has the temperament and intellect to take on the task.
June 6th, 2010 at 7:09PM
FrogProf: I take your point about musical chairs. Indeed it remains to be seen whether some shifting, some new cooperative agreements, and some Centers of Excellence business will raise the reputation of French universities. But surely a non-metric reason why France fares so poorly is that concentrating research in one or two places means less research, less output. And keep in mind too that places like NIH farm out to universities immense amounts of research.
As to the cultural revolution remark and Sarkozy — I think it’s important to add to this discussion the reminder that most French governments of the last decade or so have tried hard to reform the university system. It’s not as though Sarkozy just suddenly showed up from the political right to declare that the universities were a mess. Plenty of other leaders, from various points on the political spectrum, have tried plenty of things to breathe some life into the moribund French system. All have been met with enormous public demonstrations, strikes, even violence. I’m not surprised that Sarkozy is being a bit heavy-handed — he’s got a fight on his hands.
June 7th, 2010 at 4:07PM
The stinker is not autonomy. That can only be a good thing. The problem is that disciplines in the humanities cannot really expect to benefit much from this model of reform or change. Its hard to see Literature programs bringing in those large outside research grants.
The winners of reform will be the STEM disciplines, based in Paris, while the provincial unis will continue to cater to mediocre students majoring in journalism, history, sociology, etc, who don’t want to move too far from home. In this sense the opponents of reform are right. The crumbling humanities faculties will not be helped by this.
The only choice for the humanities would be to raise admissions standards, improve curriculum and hope that they attract students willing to pay increased tuition. Because things that will attract and keep students – smaller classes with motivated teachers, who can devote time to teaching – all cost money. Will French students be willing to pay for a better education? If not, its a race to the bottom for the humanities.
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:32AM
@MargaretSoltan: I have not so far heard about universities (I mean, the regular ones, not the grandes écoles) being made able to select their students at entrance. THAT would make real noise.
It’s even worse. At many places, they do not want to be too selective. If you have many students, you can justify asking for more faculty positions (which is good for research output and rankings). This is why in the humanities they have semiliterate students, and this is why at some places they take foreign students at what you call in the US “senior” classes in computer sciences and mathematics that do not know basic programming.
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:39AM
@Matt: Not all STEM universities are based in Paris. But I think that in general, you are right.
France hypocritically proclaims its love of literature, art, and humanities in general, but humanities universities are under-funded and badly considered – I heard colleagues talking about them as the “trashcan”.
The French system is headed towards a two-tier system: a limited number of excellence centers, mostly in STEM, and some glorified community colleges calling themselves universities.