September 2010
PARIS — France is embarking on a grand experiment — how to diversify the
overwhelmingly white “grandes écoles,” the elite universities that have produced
French leaders in every walk of life — and Rizane el-Yazidi is one of the
pioneers.
The
daughter of protective North African parents in the tough northeastern suburb of
Bondy, Ms. Yazidi is enrolled in a trial program aimed at helping smart children
of the poor overcome the huge cultural disadvantages that have often spelled
failure in the crucial school entrance exams.
“For now we’re still a small group, but when there will be more of us, it’ll
become real progress,” said Ms. Yazidi, 20. But she is nervous, too. “We’re
lucky, but it’s a great risk for us,” she said. “We might never make it” to a
top school.
Because entrance to the best grandes écoles effectively guarantees top jobs for
life, the government is prodding the schools to set a goal of increasing the
percentage of scholarship students to 30 percent — more than three times the
current ratio at the most selective schools. But the effort is being met with
concerns from the grandes écoles, who fear it could dilute standards, and is
stirring anger among the French at large, who fear it runs counter to a French
ideal of a meritocracy blind to race, religion and ethnicity.
France imagines itself a country of “republican virtue,” a meritocracy run by a
well-trained elite that emerges from a fiercely competitive educational system.
At its apex are the grandes écoles, about 220 schools of varying specialties.
And at the very top of this pyramid are a handful of famous institutions that
accept a few thousand students a year among them, all of whom pass extremely
competitive examinations to enter.
“In
France, families celebrate acceptance at a grande école more than graduation
itself,” said Richard Descoings, who runs the most liberal of them, the Institut
d’Études Politiques de Paris, known as Sciences Po. “Once you pass the exam at
18 or 19, for the rest of your life, you belong.”
The
result, critics say, is a self-perpetuating elite of the wealthy and white, who
provide their own children the social skills, financial support and cultural
knowledge to pass the entrance exams, known as the concours, which are normally
taken after an extra two years of intensive study in expensive preparatory
schools after high school.
The
problem is not simply the narrow base of the elite, but its self-satisfaction.
“France has so many problems with innovation,” Mr. Descoings said. Those who
pass the tests “are extremely smart and clever, but the question is: Are you
creative? Are you willing to put yourself at risk? Lead a battle?” These are
qualities rarely tested in exams.
But
the schools fear that the government will undermine excellence in the name of
social engineering and say the process has to begin further down the educational
ladder. The state, they say, should seek out poor students with potential and
help them to enter preparatory schools. Of the 2.3 million students in French
higher education, about 15 percent attend grandes écoles or preparatory schools.
But half of those in preparatory schools will fall short and go to standard
universities.
In
2001, Mr. Descoings, 52, who cheerfully admits that he failed the concours twice
before passing, began his own outreach program to better prepare less-advantaged
students for Sciences Po. Last year, the school accepted 126 scholarship
students out of a class of 1,300, and two-thirds of them have at least one
non-French parent, he said. But that is a far cry from 30 percent.
One
of them, Houria Khemiss, 22, is about to graduate from Sciences Po in law. The
daughter of Algerian parents growing up in impoverished St.-Denis in the Paris
suburbs, she was pushed by a high school teacher to the special preparatory
program. She wants to become a judge, “because then you have a direct impact on
people’s lives.” Many at Sciences Po will become the leaders of France, she
said, “and because we are there it gives them another point of view.”
Oualid Fakkir, 23, who is graduating with a master’s in finance, said, “It’s
very dangerous for France to close its eyes and say, ‘Equality. We have the best
values in the world.’ It’s not enough. There has to also be equality of
chances.”
But
other elite grandes écoles are more specialized than Sciences Po, concentrating
on engineering, business management, public administration and science, and they
are more concerned about the government’s program.
Pierre Tapie, 52, is the head of the business school ESSEC and chairman of the
Conférence des Grandes Écoles, which represents 222 schools.
While he shares the government’s objective of diversity, he said, there is a
long educational track before the concours. “We cannot be the scapegoat of any
demagogic decision because we are the finest and most famous part of the whole
system,” he said. Gen. Xavier Michel, 56, runs
École Polytechnique, one of the world’s finest engineering schools and still
overseen by the Ministry of Defense. Known as X, the school is extraordinarily
competitive, and its students do basic training and parade wearing the
bicorne, a cocked hat dating from Napoleon, who put the school under the
military in 1804.
“The fundamental principle for us is that students have the capability to do the
work here, which is very difficult,” with a lot of math, physics and science,
very little of it based on cultural knowledge, General Michel said. Even now, he
said, the school takes only 500 students a year, barely 10 percent of its
specially educated applicants. “We don’t want to bring students into school who
risk failing,” he said. “You can get lost very quickly.”
Despite the misgivings, in February the Conférence des Grandes Écoles, under
considerable pressure, signed on to a “Charter of Equal Opportunity” with the
government committing the schools to try to reach the 30 percent goal before
2012 or risk losing some financing.
But
how to get there remains a point of contention. There is a serious question
about how to measure diversity in a country where every citizen is presumed
equal and there are no official statistics based on race, religion or ethnicity.
A goal cannot be called a “quota,” which has an odor of the United States and
affirmative action. Instead, there is the presumption here that poorer citizens
will be more diverse, containing a much larger percentage of Muslims, blacks and
second-generation immigrants.
The
minister of higher education, Valérie Pécresse, argued that French who grow up
in a poor neighborhood have the same difficulties regardless of ethnicity.
But
the government is examining whether the current test depends too much on
familiarity with French history and culture. “We’re thinking about the socially
discriminatory character, or not, of these tests,” Ms. Pécresse said. “I want
the same concours for everyone, but I don’t exclude that the tests of the
concours evolve, with the objective of a great social opening and a better
measure of young people’s intelligence.”
The
government, with Mr. Tapie’s group, has moved to unify and expand scattered
outreach programs from different schools. Copied to some degree from Sciences
Po, the program Ms. Yazidi attends tries to reach out to smart children, give
them higher goals and help them get into preparatory schools. About 7,000 high
school students are currently enrolled, but it is too early to tell whether it
will produce a large number of successful applicants.
At
one recent session, 10 students, all children of immigrants, were working to
pass a special concours for a top business school instead of going right into
the job market. Their teacher, Philippe Destelle, pushed them to “look more
self-confident” in oral exams and “don’t be afraid to have an opinion.” He told
one, “You have the answers, but you don’t trust yourself.”
Salloumou Keita, 22, is vocal and social, but worryingly behind on his math. “We
have to prove something,” he said. “There is a look we always get, a questioning
— ‘Can he adapt?’”
Awa
Dramé, is 22, French-born of African parents, confident and talkative. “I don’t
mind being a guinea pig, so long as the experiment works,” she said. “Reaching
this level was unthinkable before, and I can see myself going higher,” she said.
“I’m full of dreams.”
Nadim Audi and Scott Sayare contributed reporting.
New York Times, June 30, 2010.
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