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Globalization and higher education policy-making in France: Love it or hate it?

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French Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

The French Government has had a complex relationship with globalization. Globalization is both a threat and a cradle for ideas. And French policy-makers have a love–hate relationship with the global dynamics underlying the European higher education reforms started in the 1990s. At the outset, higher education reforms, such as the Bologna process, were framed as a way to build Europe and fight against international competition. Yet, the mode of governance of these reforms mirrored the recommendations of international organizations and led to the precise outcome criticized in globalization, that is, greater competition. This article explores the relationship between international, European and domestic discourses and modes of governance. It uses insights from the literature on policy transfer and questions the sustainability of such ambivalence.

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Notes

  1. See also the European Journal of Education's special issue Jallade et al (2004); Fägerlind and Strömqvist (2004); Barraud and Mignot (2005); Krücken et al (2005); Mangset (2005); Mignot Gérard and Musselin (2005); Musselin (2006); Witte (2006); Amaral and Veiga (2009).

  2. This research is the result of about 80 transcribed interviews, supported by a grant from the University of London Research Fund, conducted between April 2007 and September 2007. These interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders (international, European and national civil servants, politicians, faculty and administrative members as well as students and union representatives) under Chatham House rules and interviewees are therefore referred to using a code (for example, IT5 or FM1).

  3. Claude Allègre was known as ‘unofficial minister’ or ‘vice-minister’ of higher education and research at that time.

  4. The National Council for Higher Education and Research (Conseil National de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, CNESER) is a consultative body gathering all higher education representatives to debate on higher education decrees.

  5. Alain Devaquet also had a reform project moving along a similar direction in 1986. He proposed to create a new category of higher education institutions (called Public Institutions for Higher Education (Etablissements Publics d’Enseignement Supérieur, EPES) that would have financial autonomy, be able to create their own statutes, decide on their curricula, diplomas and conditions for graduation and admission (for a summary, see Senate, 2011).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for their comments to Bernard Belloc, Anne Corbett, John Douglass, Ase Gornitzka, Claire Marzo, Sophie Meunier, Waltraud Schaulke, Manuel Souto-Outero, as well as the UACES panel ‘Can Europeanists learn from higher education scholarship and vice versa?’ in Bruges, 6–8 September 2010, of the presentations at the Social Sciences Division of City College New York (12 April 2011), the European Union Programme of Princeton University (14 April 2011) and the Center for Studies in Higher Education of the University of California Berkeley (18 May 2011) where this article was presented. I also thank the Time & Mind forum reviewers, Erwin van Rijswoud, Charles Martin-Shields, as well as editors Lynne Alexandrova and Demyan Belyaev for their comments on a policy paper, which is an extension of this article. A working paper is posted online in the Research and Occasional Paper Series, Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley. The research was funded by a Fulbright-Schuman Fellowship.

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    Cecile Hoareau

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Hoareau, C. Globalization and higher education policy-making in France: Love it or hate it?. Fr Polit 9, 222–239 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2011.9

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