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By M.S., The Economist
PLANS to create a French Ivy League are part of the biggest shake-up in French higher education since students threw cobbled stones in les évènements of 1968. Championed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, the idea is to spend €7.7 billion ($10.6 billion) to produce a handful of world-class universities which can compete with the best that North America and the rest of Europe have to offer. The proposed “Sorbonne League” will require the country’s highly selective business and engineering schools, or grandes écoles, to work with universities and independent research organisations in return for financial support. They will also be expected to get closer to the business community.
While state funded universities in the UK and North America look anxiously at their balance sheets, these financially flush new partnerships may help France to reverse its recent poor performance in the global university rankings. But some argue that Mr Sarkozy’s use of taxpayers’ money is more an exercise in academic vanity than a way to achieve commercial success. After all, business schools the world over have already come to understand the value of collaboration with other academic disciplines to create wealth and jobs. The collaboration between Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s management, engineering and science faculties, for example has created over 130 companies in the past 20 years with a market capitalisation of over $15 billion. In France itself, HEC Paris hasn’t waited for state handouts to partner with a prestigious engineering school, Ecole Polytechnique, to bring together business strategy and technological innovation. And beyond the fields of science and technology, Imperial College London has created an incubator with the Royal College of Arts to turn design ideas into viable business propositions.
Image Courtesy of AP, via The Economist
