The advantage is quality of life. Paris is expensive, noisy, not always clean or safe. BTS/DUT are short higher education degrees that focus on practical and p

The advantage is quality of life. Paris is expensive, noisy, not always clean or safe. BTS/DUT are short higher education degrees that focus on practical and professional skills, with selective admission (but not as selective as actual engineering schools). Basically in France you have: Grandes Ecoles ("great schools"), elite engineering schools that operate outside of the university system; you also have selective 2 or 3-year degrees inside high schools and universities (BTS, DUT, etc.) and then you have the universities. Where post-graduate degrees can sometimes be decent but undergraduate tends to be crap, and its pretty much a zoo or a jungle outside of STEM (fortunately, French universities tend to separate STEM campus from other disciplines filled with political activists).