Business Notes Education

France's grandes ecoles, the elite graduate schools in which its political, business and professional leaders are trained, not only provide a ticket to the upper reaches of French life but also serve as a repository of the nation's highest culture and learning. Imagine the shock, then, when France's top business school, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, decided to offer a management program next fall that will be taught in English. Reason: English has become the language of international business.

H.E.C. is not turning into an overseas branch of the Harvard Business School, however. The new classes will involve only 30 students of the school's total enrollment of 900. Despite these limitations, H.E.C. expects opposition from the French cultural establishment. Nonetheless, says H.E.C. Professor Benjamin Stora, "to be competitive in international business today is to use a language other than French. In France, you have to be brave to say that."