"France has a strange university system in which the guiding principle is non-selection," [Keiger] says. "Any person who passes the baccalaureate has an absolute right to study whatever subject - apart from medicine - at whatever university they like. It's only at the end of the first year that any selection is made, and on some courses up to 75% of students are failed. Those who fail are free to start another course as often as they like; many students have two or three false starts before progressing beyond the first year and 25% leave university without ever getting a qualification.”

… "At the same time, there are the grandes écoles, which run parallel to universities. These grandes écoles, such as the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, are funded separately and are highly selective, taking roughly the top 10% of the most academically able students. The entire French political, industrial and - to a large extent - media elite come through the grandes écoles, so there's both an implicit message not to rock the boat and an explicit statement, however wrong, that university graduates are somehow second-rate."

…Every other western country's higher education system has evolved over the years, but the grandes écoles and the universities work against each other to create a stalemate.

"It's no wonder employers don't value university graduates when all the top jobs go to students from the grandes écoles. There's a snobbery and a stasis that you just don't find elsewhere; it's got so bad that many of the ambitious French middle classes would rather their children went to a university abroad if they failed to get into an école, than to one in France.”

… "The knock-on effect is morale is desperately low amongst French academics and pay is much worse than in the UK. Just as bad, students get no support. There is no careers advice, no understanding of the importance of transferable skills and students can't get help from their tutors, because there is no framework of support. Most French academics don't even have an office at the university; to get hold of them, you have to ring them at home."

… The irony is that everyone - apart from die-hards from the grandes écoles and the formerly communist-led CGT union, who have colluded to maintain elitism for the one in exchange for tough labour laws for the other - recognises that something significant has to change. The students feel infantilised and academics are desperate to introduce selection.

"The cost of so much failure must be crippling to the French economy," says Keiger. "No system can support such wastage indefinitely. Everyone knows what must be done, but is afraid to even say so, let alone do it. Every French political party has been terrified of either tampering with the grandes écoles, or breaking the republican idea of non-selection.”