France now promotes private institutions

In a real liberal (in the European Sense meaning conservative) and contreversial reversal the French Minister of the Education Nationale, Gilles de Robien is insisting on the role of Private institutions and its validity today.

He just declared:

"Avoir ce choix est une liberté de plus qu'offre l'enseignement privé, une chance à portée de main à saisir ou non. Il faut donc donner une égalité de moyens à l'enseignement public et privé pour que ce choix puisse s'exercer", a-t-il ajouté.
"Le privé, c'est aussi l'Education nationale, l'école de la République", a ajouté Gilles de Robien"

http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/societe/20050909.OBS8717.html

Which could be badly translated by me into:"To choose, is an additional liberty offered by Private institutions.It is an opportunity to grab or not. We give all the same tools to both private and public institutions in order to get this choice." "The private sector, is also the French National Education, it the is school of the Republic."

Interesting is not it ? In Europe also the role of Government in education is decreasing...

 

Wow!!!

This is huge. In France they believe that everything comes from the power of the state. Unlike the United States, bureaucrats are highly regarded and their best institutions train future government leaders. On the other hand, in the USA, business reigns supreme and we bureaucrats are often looked on with scorn.

If they follow through on this it will be a huge change in how they look at the world.....

 

A French politician saying something positive about private higher education might be a major tectonic shift in France, but it's less exciting in America where private universities have existed for centuries. (It's a lot like "vae" in that belated regard.)

I think that in order for French private higher education to be accepted internationally, it has to be subjected to a credible and reasonably transparent academic quality assurance regime. That's what's prescribed by the Lisbon Convention, in fact.

My understanding is that the French ministry of education does have a procedure for recognizing individual degree programs at private institutions, involving teaching quality assessments and so on. But I don't know how an Anglophone would go about determining the results. (The ministry itself seems unprepared to field English language e-mail inquiries.)

I also worry that if the ministry makes its approvals on a program by program basis rather than by accrediting entire institutions, then it wouldn't be very hard to pull an Empresarial, getting one or two degree programs approved and then marketing lots of unapproved programs abroad as coming from "a fully accredited" school and hence "GAAP".

But bottom line, I consider private higher education suspect by its very nature if it comes from countries where academic quality assurance is traditionally associated with government control, and where proponents of 'private' are essentially championing 'unaccredited'. The reductio-ad-absurdem of that tendency is Knightsbridge in Denmark, a country that (so we are told) doesn't have any legal provisions for regulating private higher education at all.

 

Well, the translation was pretty poor but even at that it was easy to see that there were many objections to his statements. I would assume that if this idea were to be moved forward it would, at some point, require a change in law. I'd bet that this is the point it would grind quickly to a halt. We'll see.
Jack

 

I do not agree

Thank you for your nice comments about my translation. Could you provide one more accurate for our readers?

I respecfully disagree with you about the change of French Law. In fact the various articles of the French code of Education and the 2002 Law of modernisation sociale and the end of accreditation, establish "de jure" a total equilibrium between Public and Private universities in France.


However the unions and the habits are difficult to change . It seems that there is finally a political will to respect the law about private institutions. We will be perhaps soon in a "de facto position".

 

Re: I do not agree

If a person was to click on the link that you provided in your original posting and then scroll down the page, perhaps 90% of the way, they would find a small icon that indicates that they could "Translate This Article." If you were to click on this button you would indeed get a translation of sorts although, as I indicated in my posting, it is a pretty bad translation. THIS IS THE TRANSLATION TO WHICH I WAS REFERRING. However, because I don't want you to feel left out, I would now like to agree with your own expressed opinion (from your original posting) that your translation is pretty bad as well.
Jack

 

A huge change in the French System !

You are not able to provide a better translation as we say in French "la critique est facile mais l'art is difficile" . but it is not the main point of the discussion.

Let's concentrate on the point that you affirmed: i.e. " will require a change in law".

It is simply according to my studies not accurate. Could you elaborate on that?

I think that this official position from the present (not Mr. Allegre, which was dismissed 5 years ago) "Ministre de l'éducation" reflects the terms and spirit of the recent French Law and is important to understand well the French system, which have been through radical changes.

According to Minister (the highest authority) private institutions are equal to public ones. As one post said previously . "IT IS HUGE"

It is interesting as a general trend, which seems to follow the American system
.
Regards

 

Re: A huge change in the French System !

Déchirant.

I'm hoping we haven't a system but an evolution.

 

Re: A huge change in the French System !

Thanks for sharing this interesting information.

Maybe the next step is to establish private accreditation to
provide quality asurance in education.
In a way the RA, PA in USA and along the side of NA of France.

French revolution - or as mentioned earlier evolution of private education

Learner

 

Re: A huge change in the French System !

Well, based on what other members wrote, indicating that this was such a big deal, I made the assumption that this Education Minister was actually saying something radical. But, if as you say, all the laws that would allow this shift to take place have been enacted, then I'd say that this doesn't seem all that radical a statement. All the legal battles have been faught and the Ministers statement is just the logical follow through in a piece of cultural evolution. I would guess that it's a small shift away from Socialism and probably indicates some general dissatisfaction with the higher education system in that country. If it is an indication of a consistent trend then it might be seen by some as important but it's not clear that this is the case. I know very little about the socio-political climate in France (and neither do I care to) but I just don't see that it changes much at all if a couple of private schools pop up in that country.
Jack