3 December a day of mobilisation for ‘universities in danger’
In 2021, Prof. Virginie Dupont, Vice-President of France Universités (the French Conference of University Presidents), called through an EUA expert voice interview for an urgent reappraisal of the funding model for French universities. « The rapid growth of the student body, » she argued, « the refurbishing of our university real estate, the changing balance between block grants and project-based funding, all call for an in-depth discussion about the framework conditions in which universities will be operating in the coming years. »
A year later, and then again in 2023, two more EUA publications – Allocating Core Public Funding to Universities in Europe: State of Play & Principles and the 2023 instalment of the University Autonomy Scorecard – only served to corroborate the increasing discrepancy between state funding of the French university sector and the rise of indirect costs incurred through an external transfer of salary rises and pension costs.
The announcement on 21st November that the current government was contemplating setting up a redistribution mechanism that would deprive universities of a significant part of their block-funding grant has brought matters to a head.
On the following day, after a 4-hour meeting, a delegation of some 30 university presidents spontaneously took to the streets and marched to the Ministry for Higher Education and Research in order to ask the Minister to rescind.
They have since been heard, as the government has put the projected levy on hold, yet for the first time in many years, all the presidents of the 120-odd member institutions of France Universités have decided to put words into action and declare 3 December a day of mobilisation for ‘universities in danger’.
In actual fact, 60% of them foresee that the new governmental measures might not only lead them to postpone investment and hiring of staff, but would also compel them to close down outlying campuses thanks to which students, some of them coming from deprived rural areas, are given access to the higher education system.
3 December 2024 thus marks an important stage for French universities, yet France is obviously not alone in having to face the dire consequences of heavy budgetary restrictions as the sweeping cuts recently announced by the Dutch government testify .
