Nice-Première: The Hetzel report recommends that universities create partnerships with the business world so that every student, upon finishing their Bachelor’s, has the necessary means for professional integration. It recommends a closer link between businesses and students and advocates the requirement in all Bachelor’s programs of a “customized professional project” for the academic year. Is this the solution for you? Should businesses be more involved in a student’s curriculum?
Albert Marouani: 
We have already implemented most of the measures from this Hetzel report. The aspect of professional integration and the opening up to the business world has been a strong strategic focus since my appointment. We have established partnerships and agreements with professional and employer organizations. We have set up joint work systems concerning integration. We have a “Professional Integration” DU, we have created a dynamic in terms of internships, job offers, and integration preparation that anticipated the Hetzel report. It’s crucial. Professional integration is of great importance to us. We want to reinforce this idea. It is essential to generalize the learning of fundamental tools like IT, languages, CV writing… We want students to be able to find paid internships by making agreements with businesses. They need to recognize the value of our diplomas, even involving them in their content. We are also trying to ensure our diplomas are recognized in terms of qualification so that someone with a DEA or a DESS is no longer found working behind a supermarket register. The company should remunerate them according to their level of study and qualifications. We often don’t have this recognition.
We negotiate. The company tells us, “I would need someone with a management degree, but in reality, I will send them to do marketing in China. It would be good if they could have done a bit of marketing.” So we will have them do a bit of marketing. If the company wants to enter Asian markets, it would be good for the student to speak Chinese with some cultural knowledge. We will then offer adapted training since we have the expertise. The personal and professional project is about adaptation. We have standard Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. We will adapt the content to fit the student’s profile and project.
NP: But mainly at the request of the companies?
AM: Yes. And at the request of companies, so that they can tell us if it suits them.
NP: So companies no longer refuse to hire on the pretext that they would have to finance additional training?
AM: Exactly. So we no longer hear: “It doesn’t suit us. I will need to train them.” For internships, we won’t prevent some companies from operating with non-paid volunteers. We cannot afford for the diploma to be devalued. Our logic is not to leave the student alone in front of the business world. We need to support them and prepare their integration. If we didn’t, we would miss our responsibility towards young people who don’t have much experience, who could be helpless, not knowing how to negotiate in a ruthless world where if they can be exploited, they will be.
With citizen companies, and they exist, with a sense of responsibility, we must go further, why not with national recognition actions in collective agreements.
NP: Do you have a partnership with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI)?
AM: Not with the CCI but with UPE 06. We are setting up a strategic advisory board with business leaders from IBM, Alcatel, Texas, Amadeus… This board will meet twice a year to give its opinion on training programs, future jobs, to anticipate changes.
NP: What do you think of the students’ situation: difficulty finding housing, the obligation for many to work on the side, increasing needs…? To what extent can UNSA help these students?
AM: We have a limited ability to intervene. Indeed, student housing is either CROUS or private. We have made an agreement with CROUS to, for example, carry out housing operations in the city. We can make an agreement with municipalities to allow students to find housing. We then enter into systems where we act as guarantors. The general council is also strongly acting in this area. We are not the main actor. We do not manage university housing.
We help students by employing them in internal university jobs (in the education department, as a tutor, …). We broaden the recruitment of temporary staff to the student world. The Work-Professional Integration space allows job requests from students to be collected and negotiated with companies so that it’s not just any kind of job. If they go through us, they won’t be able to exploit the student excessively.
NP: The university is sometimes criticized. We know the famous expression “dead-end path.” Is it overrated?
AM: This expression is wrong. We certainly have a significant rate of failure and dropout at the literary level in the first cycle. We must react both to reduce this failure rate and to prevent too many from giving up. It is an indisputable point, it is too much! It’s related to the fact that we have orientation and field choice problems. We cannot undervalue our diplomas because it would go against the students’ interests. However, we must offer students in situations of failure the possibility to succeed in other paths.
On the other hand, if we look at the Master and Doctorate levels, students integrate perfectly on average after a year, a year and a half. We must also objectively say that university education is the best, better than what schools offer. For example, with a degree in history, you cannot have teachers elsewhere at the same level as those at the University. Schools may better supervise, with a better ability to find opportunities, but there cannot be superior teachers to those of the university.
We have a student audience that must be taken as it is. We haven’t selected them. A grande école will choose the best high school graduates with honors. There is no great merit in this case to have a 90% success rate. At the University, we also often have students by default. They wanted to enroll in BTS, in IUT without success, and fall back on a program thinking it might interest them or find themselves in a waiting situation. The university challenge becomes more challenging. The students we receive are not less intelligent than others. We must simply find for them the right path that suits their skills and their projects. We have many examples of students somewhat struggling in their first year and later becoming excellent researchers. Nothing is pre-determined. Our system tends to be incapable of having a selective vision of the student audience. We put in norms and grind in norms. That’s why there are significant failure rates.
NP: Hence the interest in providing pre-information at high school so that the future student knows if they are suited for higher education or not?
AM: At the same time, we must not put them on track. The differences in paths are not differences in level. Providing information, and it will be the debate in January and February, giving students indications on their chances of success from high school in a number of fields, is a given. For example, for a professional baccalaureate, the success rate in science faculty is 0%. If they want to do medicine, it’s the same, they will fail.
NP: Maybe they should be prevented from doing it…
AM: We cannot prevent them if they still want to enroll. You are talking about selection. It’s alongside registration fees the second taboo subject. It’s politically incorrect to address them. Politicians won’t risk discussing them right before the elections. Selection that would prevent someone from pursuing higher education is not good either. Everyone should be given a chance. It’s like a menu in a great restaurant. You can eat well but digest poorly the meat. You can request an excellent vegetarian menu too. It’s necessary to have the possibility of finding in the diversity of skills the possibility for everyone to compose a menu that suits their tastes and projects.
NP: Looking back, what do you retain from the anti-CPE crisis? Do you see consequences on students’ levels but also on the atmosphere?
AM: The crisis was localized in Nice, notably at the faculty of letters. It lasted two and a half weeks. Teachers caught up. Students took their exams. I did not notice more failures in the statistics.
However, it revealed concern in fields considered as fields without professional prospects. The CPE gave the impression that if it was repealed, one had a job. Which is false. There are no more jobs. There was a kind of confusion. Students thought upon graduating from university, they had a job and the CPE no longer guaranteed it and put them in a precarious situation. It mainly revealed a concern for the future. Young people today are in a more difficult situation than those of my generation despite higher qualifications and training, contrary to what is said. They have fewer generalist skills, in culture. This crisis gave the impression to the general public that the University was the place where students in failure were trained.
I was struck by the closing of university premises. Blocking buildings and preventing others from entering brought this reflection movement down to a handful: those who were mobilized. Others stayed home. Teachers deserted too. The University had become a place of non-discussion. Students have a hard time finding different forms of expression. The whole university institution has difficulty enabling in-depth debates of this type by helping students articulate their concerns and demands. It also shows that the student public is just as fragmented as the University. Students in Medicine or Law, Polytechnic are less concerned than those of Letters.
NP: And also Psycho…
AM: In Psycho, it’s a real problem. There is a considerable over-enrollment. We know there won’t be as many psychologists on the job market. We cannot do anything. That’s where personalized guidance might provide a solution to avoid some going down a dead-end path.
NP: We can discuss the problem of student representation. The Anti-Anti CPE highlighted the absence of legitimacy of who was taking action. A fact: students do not participate in representation elections. How to remedy this?
AM: It’s a general problem. It reveals a sociological, individualistic side in a society where everyone must try their luck alone. The collective has less importance.
There is a temporal element. The University does not value student involvement. The student engages for others, taking time from their studies, and the University does not recognize this as education. We have decided on an original system which is a free teaching unit in which a student who engages can have some courses on democracy, university institutions but also public speaking, participating in a debate… It gives them additional points.
For the votes, we will put new means to inform students about issues. We will try to facilitate voting as they leave a lecture hall. If no one shows you it’s important to vote, you don’t vote.
NP: Do you have a civic duty to fulfill as the 2007 elections approach to encourage students to register on electoral lists and are debates planned at UNSA in this perspective?
AM: We can make calls to vote. This goes through teachers. Even if it would be desirable, we cannot organize political debates as it would be unmanageable. A National campaign encouraging registration on electoral lists in universities with posters would be a good idea.
Interview published on October 30: https://www.nicepremium.fr/article/albert-marouani-etat-des-lieux-de-l-universite-(premier-chapitre).1290.html
