There is persistent evidence that the French university system is dysfunctional and so far there is scant evidence that it is going to change anytime soon.

 

And while currently the Australian university sector is not in comparable state of fibrillation there are signs that if matters are left unchecked, problems with some similarity are a worrisome possibility.

 

A recent New York Times article by Elaine Sciolino opens with:

There are 32,000 students at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris, but no student center, no bookstore, no student-run newspaper, no freshman orientation, no corporate recruiting system.

The 480,000-volume central library is open only 10 hours a day, closed on Sundays and holidays. Only 30 of the library's 100 computers have Internet access.

The campus cafeterias close after lunch. Professors often do not have office hours; many have no office. Some classrooms are so overcrowded that at exam time many students have to find seats elsewhere. By late afternoon every day the campus is largely empty.

Sandwiched between a prison and an unemployment office just outside Paris, the university here is neither the best nor the worst place to study in this fairly wealthy country. Rather, it reflects the crisis of France's archaic state-owned university system: overcrowded, underfinanced, disorganized and resistant to the changes demanded by the outside world.

The dormitories at the edge of the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris are rundown, but there is a long waiting list to live there. Photo: Ed Alcock for The New York Times

    An Australian academic who is familiar with both French and Australian academe has told TFW that the French problems are virtually impossible to fix in the short to medium term, since they are the result of a vast, decaying, largely monolithic system that is next to impossible to change and adding that the problems go back some 40 years while those in Australia are the result of a sharp decline in funding, and rather eccentric policies, over little more than a decade.

 

The legislation past by the Australian Parliament to enforce voluntary student unionism, and the resulting estimated loss by our universities of $160 million per annum, with minimal compensation, can be expected to have a significant effect on the extra academic facilities and services universities provide. And the refusal of the government to index funding to be comparable to costs has had a profound influence on the progressive decay of  university infrastructure and staffing both directly and indirectly. Indirectly in that the Australia's public universities having miniscule endowments or philanthropic gifts must cater to immediate commercial pressures rather than looking to the longer term in determining, as Macquarie University's vice-chancellor Steven Schwartz puts it, to "the purpose of universities".

 

Claude Allègre, a former French education minister told Sciolino, "In the United States, your university system is one of the drivers of American prosperity, but here, we simply don't invest enough. Universities are poor. They're not a priority either for the state or the private sector. If we don't reverse this trend, we will kill the new generation."

 

One of the problems is that the French university system is required to provide a near free education to every high school graduate who passes the baccalauréat exam. As a result university enrollments are high and the large number of degrees awarded have cheapened the value of a bachelor's degree.

 

But the pressure placed on the system hasn't been compensated for by the granting of increased resources. Currently the French government allocates about A$11,100 a year to each university student, about 40% than what it invests in each high school student.
 

And Sciolino makes the point, "Professors lack the standing and the salaries of the private sector. A starting instructor can earn less than $20,000 (A$26,200) a year; the most senior professor in France earns about $75,000 (A$98,000) a year. Research among the faculty is not a priority."

 

The Australian academic told TFW:

 The problems are in part the product of France's anachronistic way of streaming people into higher education institutions, and into professions, in their mid to late teens.  As Sciolino says in her, "...flexibility is not at all the tradition in France, where students are put on fixed career tracks at an early age." The whole French education system needs a fundamental overhaul, accompanied by better funding.

 

France is handicapped by "its official promotion of the republican notion of equality."  Strong higher education institutions have to be competitive, and our government understands that.  For all of the Howard government's faults, it is not about to commit the errors that brought about the problems in France.  However, John Howard seems to feel that universities should have to compete for survival; that is killing our higher education system.