The Reawakening of Higher Education in France

It is not a particularly easy task to pick out the main trends that have shaped higher education in France in the recent past or that are likely to do so in the future, especially at the finer level of detail. In my title I have chosen the word 'reawakening' to sum up these changes, but I should make it clear that the term is not used judgementally, suggesting that one state is preferable to another. My choice of word is dictated rather by two considerations. First, for reasons that will be discussed further below, French higher education passed through a period of dormancy in the mid-1980s. Its vital functions did not stop, but a series of events led to a situation where the whole system was, as it were, anaesthetised and incapable of any real initiative. This period seems now to be coming to an end, and very recently a policy for higher education has started to emerge again. The existence of this policy is what allows us to talk about a reawakening, but to do so does not, a pnon, involve any judgement of the quality of the policy or its implications. For that, time will tell. Secondly, awakening may be in response to an alarm ringing, indicating that it is time to start moving or face all kinds of problems. I hope to show that this is indeed the current situation of French higher education: the stakes and the challenges ahead are enormous, partly because of the delay in taking them into account and tackling them. Once their extent has been assessed, we should examine whether the response to the alarm came too late.