Reform in France

When French Education Minister Edgar Faure (TIME, Aug. 23) first presented his plans for reform of the nation's universities to the De Gaulle Cabinet, Foreign Minister Michel Debre listened and remarked: "It is madness." De Gaulle replied: "If the Minister of Education were mad, it would show." Quipped Faure: "According to some, there are disturbing symptoms."

Despite such mock doubts about the Minister's sanity, the National Assembly last week approved his plan, although only after a highly emotional debate. The program adds up to the most sweeping revision of higher education in France since Napoleon established the imperial university system in 1808. Aimed at preventing a renewal of the kind of riots that shut down the universities last spring, Faure's program also attacks the bureaucratic rigidity of the highly centralized system. His reform bill, which will not take full effect for at least a year, specifically indicts the "inhuman dimensions," "immobility," "isolation," and "superficial and arbitrary examinations" of the present system.

Stripping the Ministry. Faure's reform seeks to remedy those ills by stripping the central education ministry of its powers to select the presidents of each of France's present 23 universities, appoint their professors, determine their curriculums, draw up and grade exams, dictate teaching methods. Most of those powers will shift to regional and local university councils, which will include teachers, students, and even outside educational experts and political leaders.

The National Council for Higher Learning and Research, consisting of students and teachers elected by their universities and prominent nonacademic leaders, will be headed by the Minister of Education. This central authority will be confined to general planning for the system, auditing the budgets of each school, and establishing national standards for degrees in such fields as medicine, law and engineering. The new law also abolishes lifetime university chairs. To stimulate closer relations with students, professors will be required to live in the towns in which they teach, eliminating the common practice of faculty commuting. Students also won one of last spring's most insistent demands: the right to hold political meetings on campus. But the law stipulates that these must not interfere with the institution's educational mission.

Key Question. Faure's reform met more opposition outside the Assembly than in it. One association of professors warned that decentralization of the system and student participation on the councils could lead to anarchy. The costs of creating new universities and implementing new teaching methods worries other groups. A notable critic of the plan is Political Analyst Raymond Aron, who argued in the Figaro that the law could lead to a politicalization of the universities. "This is not renovation," he wrote. "It is ruin."

The key question now is whether the students will accept their newly won powers responsibly or try to sabotage the new system in hopes of achieving more radical reforms. There is still discontent around the Sorbonne, where 2,000 students rallied recently to demand that they be allowed to serve on examination juries. University officials hope that students will have the patience to tolerate the reform timetable, which sets aside the current academic year to organize the new councils and allow each campus to establish its goals. "It will be an interesting year," predicts Nanterre Philosophy Professor Louis Marin, "but I don't think we shall get much teaching done."

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