“There has never been any request to work on this issue,” that of the increase in university registration fees, assures Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education, guest of “franceinfo 8:30”, defending the position of Emmanuel Macron, targeted by criticism from the opposition.
“I’ve been here for five years, we froze the registration fees for three years, we froze the rents of the Crous, we increased the scholarships on social criteria, we never had any request to work on these questions, hammers the minister, but “We have to change this question of how can we have a scholarship system that protects young people from precariousness? Obviously, it’s a failure.”
“We have a third of scholarship students and yet we have seen how precarious students there are still so we have to rethink that”
Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Educationfranceinfo
According to Frédérique Vidal, the major university reform mentioned by Emmanuel Macron will go through “more guidance”, “more continuous training and more lifelong training in establishments”, but not by an increase in registration fees. “There could be training that graduates a professional life, a return to university to change direction or to graduate more and better in one’s professional field, so that’s a real revolution”, she congratulates herself.
Emmanuel Macron has been the target of criticism from political opponents since he declared, at the end of the Congress of the Conference of University Presidents, that “will not be able to remain permanently in a system where higher education has no price for almost all students, where a third of students are considered to be scholarship holders and where, however, we have so much student insecurity, and a difficulty in finance a model much more financed by public money than anywhere in the world”.