French university raises private funding for the first time
June 21, 2008
France’s University of Auvergne is the first university in France to create a foundation to go after non-government funding.
The University of Auvergne in France unveiled its private foundation today, whose purpose is to raise money for the university from private and corporate sources. French Minister of Education Valérie Pécresse applauded the move and called the Foundation “exemplary.” Among the charter members of the foundation are French tire manufacturer and travel behemoth Michelin and drug company Thea.
The fact that this step is even news in France may seem especially foreign to readers in the US, where universities have received corporate and other private funding for a long time. Previously, state universities in France have been exclusively public. They haven’t been able to receive outside funding from corporations and outside sources. They also had to follow strict government regulations about issues such as tuition hikes because of egalitarian rules that govern French universities. Imposed after the student and worker uprising of 1968, these rules have offered any student in France with a high school diploma a free education, with generous grants for those for whom attending would still be a hardship. There’s also a parallel system of “grandes ecoles” that educates the French elite. With 6 percent of all French college students, the grandes ecoles have difficult entrance exams and charge tuition of up to $6,700 a year, offer small classes and graduate nearly all the country’s business leaders and politicians. They can raise more money from their illustrious French alumni, while the free universities are crumbling from neglect.
Now, as part of President of France Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent reforms, state-run universities have become privatized. This means they will be able to receive donations from outside organizations and can make their own rules about issues such as tuition hikes. Proponents of the system argue this change will make French universities and students more competitive and bring more money into the system. Opponents argue that outside money will taint the quality of education and make education less universally accessible to French students. The new law, which Sarkozy said was aimed at granting more autonomy to French universities, was presented on 24 May 2007 by the minister for research and higher education, Valérie Pécresse was adopted by the French parliament in August 2007. The new French law is set to be implemented in French universities over the next five years. The university of Auverge is the first institution in France to cross the line to receive non-state funding.
Last November, when the EU first urged member states to give universities more autonomy to work with business and Sarkozy’s reforms went public, France’s national student union called for a nationwide movement against the country’s planned university reform, claiming that state disengagement could lead to excessive private sector influence over professorial appointments and what is taught at French universities. French universities will have more autonomy to decide upon their budget and staff (by creating foundations to collect money and devising their own recruitment processes), but for the first time universities are able to open their once-closed administration to external staff, allowing representatives of the business world to take part in university governance in France.
Universities in France are not the only French government institiutions Sarkozy has overhauled since his taking the presidency. In a move that, unlike the university reform, would seem to reduce corporate influence, French state-run TV stations will soon stop running TV commercials.
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