Higher Education and Markets in France

6. Conclusion

When looking at the place of the market in French higher education, one might be surprised by the distance between the opportunities offered by the legal framework and the actual behaviour of institutions and individuals. It is certainly partly due to a national culture that views education as a public service that needs to be provided through a centralised organisation.

Despite the critics of the current evolution, the increased autonomy acquired by public institutions should not be mistaken for a withdrawal of the state that would leave an empty space for market forces to fill. Could it be that the state is becoming subtler in exercising its control, using, for example, controlled competition among its agencies to produce the information needed for tighter command?

It might also be that our common analysis is based on a simplistic view of the modes of economic and social coordination. There are possibilities other than central control or the market. How to describe the behaviour of autonomous actors who sometimes compete and sometimes cooperate according to what they perceive to be their individual and their common interest. Higher education institutions are increasingly expected to enforce self-regulation in a broad framework set by the state, the role of which changes from control to supervision. It is too early to say whether such a pattern accurately depicts the French higher education system and will prove a stable form of organisation.

There are however factors already at work that may change the picture in the future: lifelong learning, meaning the blurring of the border between a more vocational higher education and an expanding continuing education; the dilution of education in an unchartered ‘knowledge economy’; and the incapacity of Europe to build a common identity to replace the vanishing national cultures.