“There is water that has infiltrated everywhere”, laments Marie, looking at the ceiling of a room at the University of Western Brittany (UBO), in Brest. Elected to the student union of the Finistère Pirate Union, she notes “Mildew stains everywhere, and two ceiling tiles that fell off with exposed threads.” Below, a large black bucket has been placed to collect the water. “You shouldn’t wander around here too much”she assures.
What Marie is describing is the most visible part of the funding problems affecting this university. But they can also be seen in the lessons: throughout the year, courses are canceled for lack of teachers, or are grouped together. More and more students are there. “There are not enough teachers in other disciplines, which means that instead of having tutorials [TD] to 20 students, which is a pedagogical practice to be acclaimed, we find ourselves in lecture halls or in tutorial mergers where they go from 20 to 50 students, or even in lecture hallsregrets the student. For example, students in psychology are at 300.”
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Should the registration fee system be reformed to bail out the coffers of higher education? Emmanuel Macron put the question on the table last January. For its part, France universities, the organization which represents universities, is demanding an additional billion euros per year for higher education, during the next five-year term. Beyond the controversy, one observation is shared: the university world lacks resources. At the University of Western Brittany (UBO), a drastic savings plan was put in place in 2019. Nearly a twelfth of the courses were eliminated. Instead of having, for example, 24 hours of law or history, you only have 20, and this is the case in each subject.
These degraded teaching conditions have consequences on the training of students. “We have a training that is much less rich than other universities because we have a lot fewer hours of lessons”, says Clara. The first-year psychology student remembers having to put on gloves in the main amphitheater this winter, to protect herself from the cold. But above all, she fears for the rest of her studies, in particular for the entry into a master’s degree, which is very selective. “If a master has the profile of two candidates, they have exactly the same average, if they see that candidate number 1 has only had 30 hours of lessons per week on average and the second 35 hours, obviously he will take the one which is at 35 hours”she explains.
“I wonder if it’s for something that I stay in Brest or if I shouldn’t change university directly?”
Clara, first-year psychology studentat franceinfo
The student loves her university. She knows that her teachers have nothing to do with it and that the problem is more general. Especially since these funding problems are not new. It is even a long-term trend, even if the LRU law, known as the “university autonomy law” of 2007, defended by Valérie Pécresse, at the time Minister of Higher Education, accelerated things according to most industry players.
But in Brest, the former dean of the faculty of law, Véronique Labrot, has long noticed this degradation. “We started by taking away one week of lessons per semestershe says. We said to ourselves that we had reached a level where it was no longer possible. Take a house: you can remove a brick, it will hold… Then two bricks, three bricks, and you remove the fourth, the wall collapses. I believe that we are not far from this situation, and I even believe that we are there.
“We have to save money on everything, even photocopies”tell the teachers who have to seek funds outside, in particular through calls for projects. “You spend a lot of time looking for projects, with 50,000 times the same document to fill out to find moneylaments Véronique Labrot.
“It also promotes the precariousness of young researchers since we will recruit them on a project: when the project is finished, the mission will be finished.”
Véronique Labrot, former Dean of the Faculty of Lawat franceinfo
According to the former dean of the law school, “You also spend your time setting up work-study training, because if you have work-study or continuing education, you will have your own resources, so you can finance a course.”
Today, the state mainly funds higher education. Public funds make up about 80% of each university’s budget. Then, a small part comes from student registration fees (2%), from the corporate apprenticeship tax (2%), from continuing education. The rest are calls for projects, with envelopes from Europe, for example, and partnerships with private companies.
But when we look at the share of GDP that our country devotes, we are very behind our neighbors, says Manuel Tunon de Lara. “France is trying, thanks to the law on research, to reach 1% of public funding for researchexplains the president of France universities, which represents the presidents of French universities. At the same time, Germany has set itself a target of 3% public funding. These differences are very significant between countries.
There is also the question of the distribution between students. When the State devotes, for example, 10,000 euros to a young person in a university, the sum rises to 16,000 on average for another in a preparatory class or in a high school (such as engineering schools, institutes of studies policies, or Polytechnique and the Ecoles Normales Supérieures).