Tribune. “Building more bridges between universities and research organisations”it is one of great ideas » launched by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, for the next ten years in higher education and research, during his speech on January 13before the Conference of University Presidents.
On this occasion, the President of the Republic painted a picture of research far from reality, by opposing universities to research organizations, and by imagining an unbalanced and compartmentalised relationship.
This vision of the relationship between universities and research organizations seems inherited from another century.
A model of synergy
It’s not just “bridges” that have been built at the national level between universities and research organisations, but a whole model of synergy.
As early as 1966, the laboratories associated with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) were the first stones. Their descendants, the mixed research units, are today the crucible of interactions between higher education and research, between teacher-researchers and researchers.
Reducing research organizations to resource agencies, as the President of the Republic seems to recommend, would be to remove one of the pillars on which public research in France rests. The current balance between universities and research organisations, which operate on an equal footing in joint research units, would be ended.
Contrary to what the President of the Republic seems to wish, a “elite” would be set up by going “towards this clarification” Come in “resource agencies with the best researchers” and “the logic from below, where teams must have as much synergy as possible on the pitch”.
Valuing the doctoral degree
Universities are therefore already, together with research organisations, at the center of gravity of research ». But they are doing badly, very badly… and it is certainly not by engulfing research organizations that the problems of lack of teachers and under-investment in higher education will be solved.
If the President of the Republic wants the universities to deal with the “elite training”it is first of all necessary to recognize and value the doctorate degree as it should be: because in all countries, except in France, the doctorate is considered and recognized as the highest level of diploma, and it is for that in all countries universities train “elites” except… in France.
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