NUS: International Relations Office

Tertiary education in France is held in the thousand-odd universities and grandes écoles (specialized engineering and management schools) that account for a higher education system of both depth and breadth for the students.

University courses are composed of essentially lecture courses and study sections, known as travaux dirigés and travaux pratiques. The former entails lectures in halls of 100 to 1000 seating capacity with the lecturer presenting the subject with notes. Study sections would be the equivalent of tutorial sessions here, consisting of small groups of students in seminar-style discussions. It is worth knowing that there is little continuous assessment carried out through the year and few intermediate examinations; students are mostly responsible for their progress throughout the year with a view to the final examinations.

France uses the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), which is a common evaluation system developed by the European Union. It is based on the number of credits assigned for each course within an academic year.

Tertiary Education

A striking trait of higher education in France, compared to other countries, is the small size and multiplicity of establishments, each specialised in a more or less broad spectrum of disciplines. Tertiary education is taught in the universities, which specialises in sciences and humanities; or the grandes écoles, which are for engineering, sciences, business and computing-related courses. A middle-sized French city, such as Grenoble or Lyon, may have 2 or 3 universities, and also a number of engineering and other specialised higher education establishments.

University
The public universities in France are named after the city where they are found, followed by a number if there are several. Paris, for example, has thirteen universities, labelled from Paris I to XIII. The French universities are usually specialised, ranging from a focus in the humanities, the social sciences, or even the pure sciences. The French system is currently undergoing a major reform, the Bologna process, which aims at creating European standards for university studies, most notably a similar time-frame everywhere, with three years devoted to the Bachelor's degree (licence in French), two for the Master's, and three for the doctorate.

Grande École

The French grandes écoles are higher education establishments outside the mainstream framework of the public universities. They are generally focused on a single subject area, such as engineering, have a moderate size, and are often very selective in their admission of students. They are widely regarded as prestigious, and traditionally have produced most of France's scientists and executives, e.g. Augustin Cauchy (French mathematician), Jean-Luc Lagardère (founder of Lagardère Group - largest French enterprise), Thierry Breton (French minister of Economy, Finance and Industry), Georges Charpak (Nobel Prize winner for Physics).

Centuries of Academic Tradition
Does the Poisson distribution by Siméon Poisson ring any bell? How about the economics term Cournot equilibrium, which was influenced by Antoine Cournot? Many would have also heard of the René Descartes’ famous statement Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). These are just a few examples of the numerous great contributions that France made to the world of science, mathematics, economics and humanities.

France has come a long way for its excellent education system. The country has many of the oldest and best institutions of higher education in the world, e.g. Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) – 1150, Université de Poitiers (1431), École des Mines de Paris (1783), École Polytechnique (1794), HEC Paris (1881).

The French institutions for tertiary education are unique as they are not structured in the way as the Anglophone universities, i.e. a large share of the scientific research is not done by universities, but by research establishments such as CNRS or INSERM. In many cases, the research units of those establishments are installed inside universities (or other higher education establishments), and jointly operated by the research establishment and the university. However, this research staff will not be counted as part of the normal academic staff of the university. These traits can cause international university rankings to underestimate French universities due to the criteria used.