Higher education reforms and student selection: the case of France (1999-2018)

Abstract

Since the end of the 20th century, French and European policies have been building up higher education and research (ESR) as one of the main levers of competitiveness in the international economic sphere. In particular, the higher education reforms enacted in France between 1999 and 2018 are evidence of a particularly intense reform drive, marked by an increased desire to regulate access to  different resources – to research funding Under the LPR and to university education under the ORE law – in the context of  competition between players as a tool for managing higher education. In analysing this paradigm change, which places at the centre of the quantified management of higher education the objective of making it a central lever for economic growth, we highlight the chronology of different laws in parallel with the analysis of this reform process. Through a more specific study of the law relating to student orientation and success, known as the ‘ORE’ law, promulgated on 8 March 2018, at the origin of the implementation of the  Parcoursup platform, we seek to highlight how investment in the quantification of higher education leads more broadly to support a policy of individualities.