French students who leave university to enter the professional world often learn it the hard way, that is to say, too late. The traditional question they expect to be asked by French recruiters, “what can you do?”, is now more often replaced by the question more common in the Anglo-Saxon business world: “what do you want to do?”. Unprepared for this sudden intrusion into their inner selves, particularly with a forward-looking rather than retrospective essence, they falter. This difference is not merely cosmetic. While many national entrepreneurs still obsess over university studies duly validated by diplomas, foreign companies incorporate the more personal dimension of commitment. They attempt to gauge the candidate’s desire, their willingness to invest in a mission as well as to persevere in achieving goals. These may reflect profound cultural differences across the Channel and the Atlantic: 88% of French business leaders are “over-credentialed” compared to barely 66% of their British and American counterparts. Diplomas, which, as a renowned professor of international business strategy at Sciences Po once remarked, do not guarantee “over-performance”! In these circumstances, it is not surprising to learn that the best American business schools select candidates based on their abilities to describe, analyze, and draw positive experience from failure.
Probably inspired by this philosophy, the Minister of Higher Education and Research, Valérie Pécresse, recently announced the launch of a plan worth a cumulative €730 million over five years aimed at redefining the specifications for the content of the university degree.
Reading the policy document titled “Multi-annual Plan for Success in the Degree”, it becomes clear that it is truly about strengthening the “professionalization” of this degree through three areas starting from the first year: “fundamental knowledge” which again emphasizes “skills” and not just knowledge to “combat social inequalities”. Then, the dissemination of a work methodology, particularly the lack felt in “written and oral communication” subjects. Finally, assurance of “support”, expressly desired by many students, possibly through monitoring or even “tutoring” for those most in difficulty. This whole system, which the Polytechnic Institutes, placed by the Minister at the heart of a renovated and flexible bridging system between general and more professional studies, have been familiar with for three years: accompanying students through “active orientation” in their “professional and personalized projects”. Changes possibly even more essential than the Law on University Autonomy. The Minister seems to understand it: changes in everyday functioning, based on humans, sometimes weigh more than a grand and ambitious reform.
Just as the individual, under new working conditions, gradually regains preeminence within the company, the student, in this program, comes back to the forefront of university concerns. Otherwise, why would the Minister mention the “human and socio-economic cost” of the 52% of students who fail at the end of their first year? And emphasize that professional degree holders find employment in the months following their training. It is quite the least we can expect when we know today that an employee places almost equal importance on the salary received and the “recognition” induced by their labor. The facilitated mobility between short “professionalizing” courses and more general university tracks falls under the same perspective: by following a student throughout their program, professors naturally record the fundamental changes in youth precisely during this post-adolescence period where everything is an attempt, experimentation, and trial and error. Students who discover or confirm a passion, modify their priorities, and develop skills that allow them to pursue a more ambitious path.
As for those who worry about the consequences of businesses taking control of the University, particularly at the cost of devaluing non-scientific subjects, they can rest assured: financial institutions in the City still frequently recruit historians or philosophers!
