4 ms·

First we do not agree on free education. I believe that's a good thing. Now, what Macron's government did wrong with research and higher education is: literall

by p4bl0 7y ago

First we do not agree on free education. I believe that's a good thing. Now, what Macron's government did wrong with research and higher education is: literally everything they did about it. The switch to high tuition as you said (especially given that it was only for foreigners, which I consider racist, and anyway the Conseil Constitutionnel recently found this measure unconstitutional). Parcoursup was a very bad decision: it is poorly designed, it is much worse than the previous system for university admissions for obvious algorithmic reasons that my undergrad students can spot (but that Villani apparently can't?), and it also does not solve the actual problem which is the lack of universities and professors. There is also the way they force universities to merge by making funding conditional to merger, this comes at high cost for no clear benefits (except for maybe jumping a _few_ places in the Shanghai university ranking, which is pure bullshit). There is the way they decided to fund public research: almost exclusively via calls for project, which is a very very inefficient wqy of distributing money as everyone has to work for month to make application and less than 10% of applicants are actually funded so more than 90% of all this work is done for next to nothing, and in addition to that the money is very badly distributed with very rich man that have so much money they don't even know how to spend it and a majority of labs where it becomes difficult to do any research at all. Their funding policy also force universities to cut there spending which is mostly salaries, meaning not replacing professors who retires for example, which means even less professors while there is more and more students (and that was forseeable, they all were born around two decades ago and have been through primary and middle and high school, we saw them coming). I could continue but I'm on my mobile phone so I will stop there.

xwolfi 7y ago
Foreigners aren't a "race", what are you saying. The proper definition of foreigner in this context is: never paid any taxes and most likely will not later. If foreigners in China, Chile or Uganda start paying french taxes, I'll follow you. On raising in the Shanghai index, it's bullshit only if you don't want to compete. Sure the metrics can be discussed but the impact of the low rank is very much here: top researchers abroad won't even hear about french labs and won't feel it will further their career compared to a serious university in the middle of Japan who invested to fit the metric. Another thing that I always feel when I hear those grumpy french rambles is that it's absolute, as if time didnt change things and situations were eternal. What's wrong with adapting and trying and reverting if it doesnt work then try something else ? Doing nothing or whining at every attempt to solve a problem will just lead to...nothing.
- enriquto 7y ago
  > If foreigners in China, Chile or Uganda start paying french taxes, I'll follow you. As a non-french national living in France since 2011, I don't follow you. I'm paying the same taxes as my french colleagues, and I'm very happy about that.
  - black_puppydog 7y ago
    And to clarify: that also applies for PhD salaries in France, as well as "housing tax" (taxe d'habitation) both of which will be paid during the studies, so even if you just arrive for the studies and leave straight after.
- p4bl0 7y ago
  Are you sure you know what racism is? Racism isn't about race. Otherwise it wouldn't exist: there is only one human race. Racism is about culturally perceived race. The vast majority of the people who are affected by this measure come from North Africa. You know, French ex-colonies. So yes, it was a racist move in my opinion. Concerning Shanghai index: what if I don't want to compete? The model of small French universities was good enough even for elitist standards such as international awards. It produced as much Medal Fields as the entire US system. It produced a lot of Nobel Prizes in a variety of disciplines. And most of them will tell you: in the current system where they would have had to spend months and months each year to look for funding instead of doing actual research, where they would have had a series of short term contracts working on different projects in their early career, and then would be forced to recruit collaborators on the same kind of short term contracts, they simply wouldn't have been able to conduct the research that lead them to the award. Finally, I think you should pay attention to what it seems you don't want to hear when you listen to "grumpy french rambles". Your analysis is ridiculous. It's not the problems that are denied, it's wrong solutions. Take Parcoursup as an example. The problem is: there are more and more students coming to universities due to a baby boom starting in 2000, and there is not enough places at universities to have them. It's not like it wasn't easy to see it coming. Those kids went through the whole school system before arriving at uni. But instead of preparing for it by recruiting more professors, by building new universities if necessary (or at least new buildings), the governments decided to just wait and let the situation rot. Once it was a mess, they used it to push their political agenda of adding a selection step to enter university in addition to the one we already have which is the Baccalauréat. The new thing is: this selection step is not Nation-wide, it's done with varying criterion (which are typically not known by candidates) uni by uni, department by department. In addition to that the Parcoursup platform which runs all that is an algorithmic mess leading to deadlock (like a candidate A who prefers uni X over Y and a candidate B who prefers uni Y over X but uni X ranks B before A and uni Y A before B so A and B both wait to see if a spot will be freed at their most wanted uni but they depend on the other first giving up their place there, which won't happen because they don't know that they can safely do that) all that because they imposed stupid design conditions just so it is different from the previous system which used Gale-Shapley algorithm to solve these situations… So sorry but no, it's not that it's wrong to "adapt and trying and reverting if it doesn't work". It's just plain wrong to do stupid things that do not solve the actual problems, especially when we can know in advance that they won't. I'm absolutely not for doing nothing (although in the Parcoursup case, nothing would have been better), I'm for doing what is actually necessary to solve problems that exists.
generationP 7y ago
I'm curious, what's been going on with Parcoursup? (I don't read enough French to understand the discussions.) Also, I'm not surprised that tuition for foreigners is a lever they are pulling. A government is responsible, first and foremost, to its own citizens. Racism? Really? What about "localism" or "separation of duties"?
- p4bl0 7y ago
  See my answer to one of your sibling comments.
- pascalmahe 7y ago
  For the racism part: France, as an ex-empire, is very attractive to its former colonies' students. And we have agreements to make it easier for them to come. So we get many students from Africa or the Middle East, often on merits and/or scholarships. In my engineering school, there were students from Turkey, Sudan (might be South Sudan now)... Raising the price of tuition will mostly impact people from these countries rather than people from other European or American countries.
  - LunaSea 7y ago
    So because France had colonies they now have an obligation to take in foreign students?
    - justAlittleCom 7y ago
      It's a moral obligation, yes. Plus, it's still nowadays a very powerful lever to keep relationship with local elites.
      - LunaSea 7y ago
        No, it isn't. They are independent countries and should be treated as such. Diplomatic bribes aren't a good enough reason to continue doing subsidising this.
- 7y ago
song 7y ago
What I've never understood is why not just create an other ranking that competes with the Shanghai ranking. I wish polytechnique or some other institution of high learning published their own ranking and marketed it as well as that ranking was marketed. You are right, it's pure bullshit and heavily favors big institutions rather than small ones which does mean that French style grande écoles are penalized but the solution isn't to conform to it but instead to change the way universities is ranked. I have also been very disappointed with Macron's policies when it comes to education. The higher tuition for foreigners is also I believe a mistake since it is good for a country when highly educated foreigners come to study there. France is at a disadvantage when attracting foreign talents due to the language barrier but could compensate for it thanks to the low tuitions. Now with those changes, it will become harder and diminish the cultural influence that France had. Not a good long term move.

by p4bl0 7y ago

xwolfi 7y ago

Foreigners aren't a "race", what are you saying. The proper definition of foreigner in this context is: never paid any taxes and most likely will not later. If foreigners in China, Chile or Uganda start paying french taxes, I'll follow you. On raising in the Shanghai index, it's bullshit only if you don't want to compete. Sure the metrics can be discussed but the impact of the low rank is very much here: top researchers abroad won't even hear about french labs and won't feel it will further their career compared to a serious university in the middle of Japan who invested to fit the metric. Another thing that I always feel when I hear those grumpy french rambles is that it's absolute, as if time didnt change things and situations were eternal. What's wrong with adapting and trying and reverting if it doesnt work then try something else ? Doing nothing or whining at every attempt to solve a problem will just lead to...nothing.

enriquto 7y ago
> If foreigners in China, Chile or Uganda start paying french taxes, I'll follow you. As a non-french national living in France since 2011, I don't follow you. I'm paying the same taxes as my french colleagues, and I'm very happy about that.
- black_puppydog 7y ago
  And to clarify: that also applies for PhD salaries in France, as well as "housing tax" (taxe d'habitation) both of which will be paid during the studies, so even if you just arrive for the studies and leave straight after.
p4bl0 7y ago
Are you sure you know what racism is? Racism isn't about race. Otherwise it wouldn't exist: there is only one human race. Racism is about culturally perceived race. The vast majority of the people who are affected by this measure come from North Africa. You know, French ex-colonies. So yes, it was a racist move in my opinion. Concerning Shanghai index: what if I don't want to compete? The model of small French universities was good enough even for elitist standards such as international awards. It produced as much Medal Fields as the entire US system. It produced a lot of Nobel Prizes in a variety of disciplines. And most of them will tell you: in the current system where they would have had to spend months and months each year to look for funding instead of doing actual research, where they would have had a series of short term contracts working on different projects in their early career, and then would be forced to recruit collaborators on the same kind of short term contracts, they simply wouldn't have been able to conduct the research that lead them to the award. Finally, I think you should pay attention to what it seems you don't want to hear when you listen to "grumpy french rambles". Your analysis is ridiculous. It's not the problems that are denied, it's wrong solutions. Take Parcoursup as an example. The problem is: there are more and more students coming to universities due to a baby boom starting in 2000, and there is not enough places at universities to have them. It's not like it wasn't easy to see it coming. Those kids went through the whole school system before arriving at uni. But instead of preparing for it by recruiting more professors, by building new universities if necessary (or at least new buildings), the governments decided to just wait and let the situation rot. Once it was a mess, they used it to push their political agenda of adding a selection step to enter university in addition to the one we already have which is the Baccalauréat. The new thing is: this selection step is not Nation-wide, it's done with varying criterion (which are typically not known by candidates) uni by uni, department by department. In addition to that the Parcoursup platform which runs all that is an algorithmic mess leading to deadlock (like a candidate A who prefers uni X over Y and a candidate B who prefers uni Y over X but uni X ranks B before A and uni Y A before B so A and B both wait to see if a spot will be freed at their most wanted uni but they depend on the other first giving up their place there, which won't happen because they don't know that they can safely do that) all that because they imposed stupid design conditions just so it is different from the previous system which used Gale-Shapley algorithm to solve these situations… So sorry but no, it's not that it's wrong to "adapt and trying and reverting if it doesn't work". It's just plain wrong to do stupid things that do not solve the actual problems, especially when we can know in advance that they won't. I'm absolutely not for doing nothing (although in the Parcoursup case, nothing would have been better), I'm for doing what is actually necessary to solve problems that exists.

generationP 7y ago

I'm curious, what's been going on with Parcoursup? (I don't read enough French to understand the discussions.) Also, I'm not surprised that tuition for foreigners is a lever they are pulling. A government is responsible, first and foremost, to its own citizens. Racism? Really? What about "localism" or "separation of duties"?

p4bl0 7y ago
See my answer to one of your sibling comments.
pascalmahe 7y ago
For the racism part: France, as an ex-empire, is very attractive to its former colonies' students. And we have agreements to make it easier for them to come. So we get many students from Africa or the Middle East, often on merits and/or scholarships. In my engineering school, there were students from Turkey, Sudan (might be South Sudan now)... Raising the price of tuition will mostly impact people from these countries rather than people from other European or American countries.
- LunaSea 7y ago
  So because France had colonies they now have an obligation to take in foreign students?
  - justAlittleCom 7y ago
    It's a moral obligation, yes. Plus, it's still nowadays a very powerful lever to keep relationship with local elites.
    - LunaSea 7y ago
      No, it isn't. They are independent countries and should be treated as such. Diplomatic bribes aren't a good enough reason to continue doing subsidising this.
7y ago

song 7y ago

What I've never understood is why not just create an other ranking that competes with the Shanghai ranking. I wish polytechnique or some other institution of high learning published their own ranking and marketed it as well as that ranking was marketed. You are right, it's pure bullshit and heavily favors big institutions rather than small ones which does mean that French style grande écoles are penalized but the solution isn't to conform to it but instead to change the way universities is ranked. I have also been very disappointed with Macron's policies when it comes to education. The higher tuition for foreigners is also I believe a mistake since it is good for a country when highly educated foreigners come to study there. France is at a disadvantage when attracting foreign talents due to the language barrier but could compensate for it thanks to the low tuitions. Now with those changes, it will become harder and diminish the cultural influence that France had. Not a good long term move.