New French revolution : liberté, inégalité et autonomie - Hannah Fearn, Times Higher Education, 19 août 2010

Freedoms could result in more businesslike leaders in the academy, but how will staff fare ? Hannah Fearn reports

A law passed by President Nicolas Sarkozy to introduce institutional autonomy to French higher education is set to create a new breed of university leaders, it has been suggested.

Experts say rapid change in the sector will result in the emergence of a group of strong, ambitious university heads acting as advocates for their institutions, streamlining and rationalising staff and bureaucracy and perhaps even pursuing mergers with other universities.

Under the 2007 Law for the Freedom and Responsibility of Universities, Mr Sarkozy granted institutions more freedom from state control. By last month, 51 of the country’s 85 universities had gained autonomous status.

The government is also pouring billions of euros into French higher education with the aim of boosting its international reputation and addressing the imbalance between the grandes écoles - elite, selective higher education institutions that operate outside the main university system - and the rest of the French academy.

Andrée Sursock, senior adviser at the European Universities Association, said that with their new freedoms, institutions would need a new kind of leader.

"Given that the law gives more autonomy, it requires a different kind of leadership," she explained. "They have more freedom to manage their resources - human resources, financial resources and links to industry. All those things are going to require a person who can lead more strategically."

Paul Benneworth, senior researcher in higher education policy at the University of Twente’s Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, said the reforms had created the opening that could allow French universities to attract and develop the kind of leaders found in UK universities since the 1990s.

"This is the kind of leader who says : ’We are this kind of university, we are going to streamline our procedures, close underperforming departments and become world-class in our own way,’" he said.

He also envisaged French university leaders increasingly being "prepared to become very unpopular and face down the conservative forces in universities, including the staff and student unions".

However, the model that is developing in France is not an exact replica of the one that has given birth to the modern British vice-chancellor - for example, French university presidents will still be elected.

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