Word: se
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...small cadre of universities to the present 76 after the events of 1968. The number of graduate degrees awarded rose from 90,000 in 1967 to 145,000 a decade later. Many of the newer campuses are small schools in the provinces whose programs were sharply scythed by Saunier-Seïté. Said Alain Touraine, research director of the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences: "Instead of both selective grandes écoles [the elite specialist schools outside the regular university system that train most of France's future leaders] and open-admission universities, we will have...
With little advance warning, Saunier-Seïté chose this academic year as the time to guillotine 1,131 or 30% of all master's and doctoral degree programs, mostly in the humanities and social sciences. Among them: a Sorbonne doctorate in educational sciences directed by noted Sociologist Vivianne Isambert-Jamati (who is a consultant to Saunier-Seïté's office) and Medievalist Pierre Jonin's acclaimed graduate seminar at Avignon...
Technically, Saunier-Seïté merely announced that the government would not accredit diplomas in the ill-fated programs, but that was enough. In France nationally accredited diplomas account for 90% of graduate degrees-and are the only degrees with prestige in the job market...
...Saunier-Seïté defended her cutbacks as an efficiency move that will end course duplication and restrict graduate education to major university centers like Paris, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Lille, Lyon, Nancy and Strasbourg. These, she hopes, will become "poles of excellence." (With that in mind she also doubled the number of classroom hours required for all graduate degrees, and so far students have not complained.) At smaller universities like Amiens, Perpignan and Avignon, the minister wants faculty members to concentrate on lower-level courses. Says she: "You can't teach everything everywhere." That rationale, reasonable though...
...Saunier-Seïté and Premier Raymond Barre, however, view the reorganization as a forward-looking step into the technological '80s. While slashing programs in the humanities and social sciences, the government did approve almost all (90%) of the science programs up for review, in line with a five-year plan that names technological research and development as the nation's top priority. The government also increased the 1981 national budget for universities...