Macron's education cuts deny admission to thousands of French university students
Less than two weeks before classes resume on September 3, tens of thousands of French students are still being denied admission to university by the Parcoursup algorithm set up by the Orientation and Success for Students (ORE) law imposed in the face of mass student protests this spring. According to figures released on August 9, of the 812,050 university-age students who are enrolled in Parcoursup, 66,400 still had not been admitted anywhere.
The fact that tens of thousands of students may be denied higher education underscores the reactionary character of President Emmanuel Macron’s education cuts. The measure aims to make universities more competitive and to prepare their privatization. It gives France’s public universities the power to select, and to reject, their own students.
Previously, virtually every student wanting to attend university, who had passed the baccalauréat exam at the end of high school, would be assigned to a public university in his or her chosen field. The new law, however, requires university admissions to take into account the baccalauréat score, the quality of the student’s high school, and the student’s academic record and internships. This favors more affluent layers of the population who can access better-ranked schools, travel, obtain internships and cultural experiences—opportunities denied to working-class families.
In the last three years, the number of incoming university students has grown by 30,000 to 40,000 each year, a tendency expected to continue until 2020. Public universities would therefore need substantial state investment to deal with the increased number of students. Instead, Macron’s education cuts are substantially lowering the number of enrollments, forcing students to either attend private universities or abandon their studies outright.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/27/fred-a27.html