Dans une tribune parue dans le Figaro du 07/08 juillet 2012, Laurent Bigorgne, directeur de l'Institut Montaigne, fait valoir les mérites de l'autonomie accordée ces dernières années aux universités.
La crise dans laquelle nous vivons depuis l’automne 2008 consacre notre préférence pour le court terme. L’intérêt de l’opinion porte prioritairement sur "l’ici et le maintenant", sur les mesures immédiates qui pourraient améliorer ou dégrader notre compétitivité, ainsi que la crédibilité de nos finances publiques. L’enseignement supérieur et la recherche, objets de nombreuses attentions depuis 2007, échappent à cette règle ou plutôt, devraient absolument y échapper. Filière d’intérêt stratégique, ce secteur doit inscrire son effort de développement dans le temps long et échapper aux soubresauts du combat politique comme des schémas partisans.
Le gouvernement a annoncé une nouvelle loi d’orientation de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche pour le début de l’année 2013. La ministre garantit néanmoins que l’autonomie des universités ne sera "absolument pas" remise en question. Elle est devenue un point de convergence entre droite et gauche, il faut s’en réjouir. Tous ceux qui souhaitent que nos universités tiennent leur rang dans la compétition internationale seront attentifs à ce que les progrès réalisés soient préservés.
D’abord, l’émergence d’un conseil d’administration organisé autour du président d’université, gouvernable et à même de fixer un cap stratégique, équilibré à l’avenir par un sénat académique.
Ensuite, la diffusion sans aucune concession d’une culture de l’évaluation et de la transparence, seule à même de justifier un investissement croissant de la puissance publique et de préparer demain – débat difficile – une participation des familles au financement des universités à travers un système mesuré, progressif et redistributif. Des voix, à gauche, à droite, au sein de la Conférence des Présidents d’Université… plaident pour l’ouverture d’un tel débat.
Enfin, une acceptation intégrale de la logique de l’autonomie par l’ensemble des acteurs du système, à commencer par l’administration centrale du ministère. Cette dernière doit-elle encore valider ex ante les nouvelles formations créées par les universités ? Combien de temps d’ailleurs aurons-nous besoin d’un ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche ou du Conseil National des Universités (CNU) ? A moyen terme, l’Etat doit jouer un rôle de stratège et faire confiance aux universités devenues autonomes. Il doit renouveler en profondeur sa palette d’intervention à travers les agences qu’il a commencé à mettre en place (AERES et ANR).
Tout va très vite autour de nous et de nombreux pays en Europe et ailleurs mettent en place des politiques d’excellence visant à concentrer des moyens nouveaux sur les universités les plus à même de rayonner dans le monde entier et d’attirer les meilleurs étudiants et les meilleurs universitaires. René Ricol et ses équipes laissent un héritage considérable au Commissariat général à l’investissement (CGI). En effet, pour la première fois de l’histoire universitaire contemporaine, la politique des "initiatives d’excellence" ou IDEX a permis de concentrer de très importants moyens sur d’autres établissements universitaires que les grandes écoles…
En outre, les équipes du CGI ont légitimé la notion d’excellence en faisant arbitrer leurs choix par des jurys internationaux et en conditionnant à terme la libération de moyens considérables – plusieurs centaines de millions d’euros pour chaque IDEX – à une stricte évaluation des réalisations de chaque regroupement d’établissements concerné.
Beaucoup a été fait et beaucoup reste à faire pour nos universités. Si la dépense par étudiant doit continuer de progresser, une partie des moyens dont les universités ont besoin pour mieux encadrer leurs étudiants – et donc assurer leur réussite – et tout à la fois déployer une recherche de grande qualité se trouvent dans les organismes de recherche. Pourra-t-on débattre à l’occasion de la concertation souhaitée par le nouveau gouvernement d’un rapprochement plus important encore entre les universités et ces derniers ? C’est sans doute ce qui manque le plus à notre système universitaire pour rivaliser avec les grandes universités de recherche dont les noms sont connus dans le monde entier.
Avec l’autonomie, certaines universités vont être plus inventives et plus innovantes que d’autres. Certaines vont souhaiter dépasser le cadre de la loi de 2007 et même celui, quand il sera posé, de la nouvelle loi de 2013. C’est cet état d’esprit qu’il faut encourager, soutenir et diffuser. Au fond, après des décennies de tutelle, le moment est sans doute venu pour un Etat stratège et décentralisateur de laisser les universités assumer pleinement leur destin…

In competitive times, universities are being encouraged to create more distinct brand identities. But how compatible is this with the existing measures of excellence?
At last week's CASE Europe conference on distinctiveness in higher education, co-hosted by the Distinct Project, it quickly became clear that universities are in a bit of a pickle: they have to be able to stand out in a marketplace where all the others competitors offer the same basic service - teaching and research. And they have to make the case that they're doing their own thing when the entire system for measuring excellence (which, in turn, influences student choice) sets out to compare one institution to another.
Tuesday's conference set out to share the outcomes from a two-year investigation into what distinctiveness looks like, both within and beyond the HE sector. Led by Oxford Brookes University and funded by the Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce), the research defined distinctiveness as "the vehicle which enables an organisation to achieve many of its strategic goals through being memorable, authentic, and clearly articulating what it has to offer to the people that are important to it".
The crux of the matter is that the very survival of universities rests upon their ability to be clear about who they are and then to use that knowledge to attract students, partners and ultimately, funding. Internally, a distinctiveness strategy is also credited with improving staff motivation and loyalty. The conference presented a course of action through the Distinct Framework for universities that are soul-searching (there was many a mention of the "squeezed middle" and what to do if that's where your institution finds itself) but in doing so, it raised many more questions - notably around leadership, rankings and mission group membership.
Conflict exists between standardisation and distinctiveness - branding without being branded. Bob Burgess, the vice chancellor of the University of Leicester spoke of the recurring challenge of developing strengths, such as widening participation, that sit at odds with league tables. He was highlighting the fact that these rankings are measurements of success which, on the whole, only reflect well for those at the top. The issue has been raised before on the network. Edward Peck, VC of the University of Birmingham, wrote about "a tendency to standardisation" while, at the same time, universities are "sensitive to the nuances in the hierarchy of apparent status that we seem to have internalised". He goes on to say: "The paradox of diversity in HE in the UK is that we have given too much sway to the traditional idea of the university without wanting either to face up to the hierarchy that is therefore implied or to pursue the distinctiveness that would make such a hierarchy largely irrelevant."
And that is just one of the paradoxes. If, as the Distinct Project suggests, the future survival of an institution will come down to whether or not it has a strong brand, or personal identity, then where does that leave the mission groups - where commonality takes precedence over individuality?
Distinctiveness also invariably presents a challenge for leaders: do you pursue distinctiveness (excellence in teaching and close links with regional economy, for example) and find success in your niche or do you strive to mimic those institutions who have been identified as the best (by focusing on research, for example) and risk paling into insignificance? Do you continue with the status quo, hoping to ride the wave of policy changes and come out on the other end relatively unscathed or accept that distinctiveness may require a cultural shift and lots of unpopular change to succeed?
So what to do? The answer from the conference, in part, seems to lie in a pragmatic definition of distinctiveness, one which is less about being unique (in a stand alone sort of way) and more about being able to effectively communicate what you do. It is more about gleaming from the subject tables, or other specific categories in the ranking, what improvements can be made, rather than lamenting your overall position. Not that a steadfast commitment to distinctiveness is without its benefits, Teeside University is a good case study. Its VC, Graham Henderson, told a compelling story of how, through focusing on the needs of the regional economy and by responding quickly to policy priorities (a strategy he calls 'responsive repositioning') the institution has grown from 8,000 students in 1992 to 30,000 in 2008. It is also the only modern university to be named Times Higher Education University of the year. But he conceded that his strategy, though consultative, was driven by leadership mandate and staff had to be supported if they felt they couldn't buy into the agenda and chose to move on.
So distinctiveness works. But it costs. How much an institution is willing to pay is, I guess, determined by how at risk it feels in these challenging times. And how at risk it is comes down to the strength of its brand..and that takes us neatly back to the start of the blog.

By Jean-Marie Boisson. In a book published in 1968, two Belgian academics identified five different types of university models: Anglo-Saxon, German, American, French and Soviet.
Their ideas can be reduced to the following extremely short synthesis: the Anglo-Saxon model provides the individual with a way to realise him- or herself through learning; in the German model learning serves the truth; the American model sees learning as being about human progress. In the two remaining models, the French and the Soviet, learning serves the needs of existing power structures.
As a French academic, my first reaction could have been taken straight out of an Asterix cartoon: “They are crazy, the Belgians”. But I do realise that our Belgian colleagues are so much better placed than we are to form a synthetic and comparative view of university systems. So after some thought and with my point of comparison defined as 1968, it became clear that this analysis is quite precise in historical terms.
There are actually not very many people, not even among academics, who know that the French Revolution suppressed traditional universities in 1793, and that Napoleon confirmed the new university system and placed it at the service of la nation with its essential mission being to provide professional training.
Universities were replaced by grandes écoles – including schools of engineering, military training, medicine, chemistry and law – all in the service of the state. Only two traditional faculties remained: faculties of letters and faculties of science. Their essential mission was to train teachers who, in turn, would train little French boys in the lycées (upper secondary) – girls were only admitted to the grandes écoles at a very late stage – and prepare them for Napoleonic schools. So the system was perfectly coherent and self-contained.
Napoleon’s université impériale took the place of a national ministry of education until it was replaced by the ministry of public instruction during the republic. In this way 'university' came to stand for the higher education sector of the regional administrative units known as 'academies' (as they are still known), at the head of which the government appoints a high-level administrator with the title of recteur. The French recteur is in charge of all types of education: primary schools, secondary schools and tertiary-level education. The académie awards the title of ‘university', but this does not relate to any unified structure. So, on the one hand, rectors manage the finances and personnel issues at universities while, on the other, faculties and their deans manage pedagogical issues and now also research.
Meanwhile, the schools of medicine, law and, later, pharmacy preferred to be known as faculties, as this sounded more prestigious in international terms and corresponded better to the development of research at these institutions. But the presence of several such faculties in any given city does not necessarily lead to the creation of a university. The rector remains the administrator appointed by Paris who has an overview of all areas of education, and the deans, elected by their peers, enjoy a wide measure of autonomy, although within the financial limits set by the ministry. The large majority of university personnel are civil servants.
The traditional grandes écoles, structured to meet the needs of the large corps de l’état, are essentially professional education institutions that enjoy wide autonomy and are usually linked to ministries other than the national Ministry of Education. They have increasingly included the large (and subsequently the less large) schools of commerce that are structured in much the same way, but are almost all under the auspices of chambers of commerce and not the national Ministry of Education.
French system is very different
From this it becomes clear that the French system of higher education differs in every way from the systems found in all the other countries surrounding France. Even countries that have been under strong Napoleonic influence, such as Spain or Italy, have maintained traditional universities with an elected rector, while polytechnic universities contain the equivalent of the grandes écoles for engineers or administrators.
In this historical perspective it is easier to understand the shock that occurred in France at the end of the 1960s: it was the result, on the one hand, of the demographic explosion in the number of young people who demanded enrolment in higher education and, on the other, of the implementation of a new law, which introduced new structures according to which universities could elect their own presidents. The first shock, that of student demographics, resulted in immense efforts being made by faculties of science and letters and, to a lesser extent, of law and economics, to overhaul their curricula completely in order to cope with the influx of students.
It was no longer a question of concentrating on the training of future teachers, as it had been earlier, but of diversifying courses to make them more professional and to respond to the need to prepare students for different jobs. All of this was done on a limited budget. In the light of limited funding, the constraints imposed (no changes were made around student selection and student rights) and criticism of institutions' lack of contact with civil and economic society – contact that was normally reserved for the grandes écoles) – this proved a success.
The second shock, however, came as a result of the 'Edgar Faure' law, which introduced genuine universities. It had disastrous consequences: the faculties embraced the new structures and under the fallacious but then famous pretext of ‘small is beautiful’, they set themselves up as universities by instituting haphazard alliances; law and medicine here, letters and law there.
In many cases they simply set up on their own. In this way, in the majority of our cities in the provinces (not to mention Paris) the faculties split into two, three, even four separate universities. It is not worth elaborating on the consequences of this state of affairs: a lack of visibility and confusion on the national as well as international level, not to mention sterile rivalries among universities in the same location and the multiplication of identical job functions, leading to a lack of efficiency and to funding problems. Unfortunately, this state of affairs is impossible to change easily.
Even with the best of wills and when people are persuaded of the argument about how inefficient these divisions are, a university president cannot lightly take the risk of attempting to merge with one or two other universities since a merger will always be seen internally as being advantageous only to the other institutions involved and will mean the president's power is diminished. Few mergers have so far been completed; the present powers of the presidents are far too strong and strategic. Now and again, a merger project is advertised. There are the ‘PRES’ structures, which bring universities and research institutions together in clusters, but they risk cementing divisions instead of minimising them.
University reforms
And yet this question is scarcely addressed in the swelling debate on current university reforms in France, regardless of the fact that it is one of the fundamental issues if one wants to reinstate some sort of order in the French higher education system, and to align French institutions with the great universities throughout the world.
The main objection to regrouping France's many institutions is that it would result in huge universities. This is true, but one can imagine several solutions along the lines of those practised elsewhere and there are multiple examples: the University of London, the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of California are all enormous institutions in terms of sheer numbers. But they have managed to adapt their forms of governance. In essence, these forms of governance are based on a definition of the respective strengths of their various components and a decentralisation of central power (whether rector or president) to faculties or their equivalents, which are situated on different campuses.
A rector or president should in essence be responsible for general policy, institutional planning, global inter-university relations – with the professional world and with international partners – and long-term decision-making. They should not get involved in things, such as evaluating academic competence, that are outside their remit (except within their own academic field, of course) or research issues. That should be what the deans or heads of departments do since they are responsible for the functioning of faculties or departments.
It is vital that France find the regulatory and financial means to encourage or oblige universities at major locations to merge into large, universal and decentralised institutions. The law should reserve the title of ‘university’ (or ‘research university’ as some countries abroad term it) for institutions that bring together all the major basic disciplines in education and research in large faculties or schools. This reunification may be difficult, but it is inevitable. It could also involve the grandes écoles which call themselves ‘graduate schools’, as they benefit from what universities do. Unfortunately, the new law has completely missed this point.
Furthermore, the new law has given greater powers to presidents in areas that should not be theirs, such as the selection of teaching staff. All this law does is to replace the present system of national centralisation, with all its flaws as well as its strengths, with an internal centralisation. This risks creating a more inefficient system, which will merely lead to a reinforcement of local competition.
* Jean-Marie Boisson is professor emeritus in the economics faculty of the University of Montpellier. A longer version of this article has been published in the Journal of European Higher Education Area, March 2012, under the title “Why Do So Many French Universities Wear a Number? Some reflections on the recent (hi)story of French universities system".

Enhancing University Competitiveness through Educational Facilities. Seoul, Korea, 18-20 June 2012. 3rd in the series: Higher Education Spaces and Places: for Learning, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange.
Organised by the OECD Centre for Effective Learning Environments (CELE) and the Educational Facilities Research and Management Center, Korean Educational Development Institute (EDUMAC - KEDI), it will bring together those who lead, manage and design the world’s university facilities to discuss how to create environments that will enable universities to remain competitive on the global stage.
It will cover four themes:
    University vision and facilities for the future.
    University Facilities Design: Creating the sustainable campus.
    University Facilities Procurement: Using public private partnerships.
    University facilities management: The integration of planning and operations, and the systems required to support this.
The conference website: http://cele2012korea.com. For further information, contact Alastair Blyth.

18-20 June 2012: Enhancing the Competitiveness of Universities through Educational Facilities, Seoul, Korea.
This conference - organised by OECD/CELE and the Educational Facilities Research & Management Center (EDUMAC) Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) - will be the third in the series of conferences on the topic of “Higher Education Spaces and Places: for Learning, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange”. These conferences have addressed the changing role of today’s higher education facilities, which must accommodate a range of activities – providing knowledge transfer through education, skills development, and cultural and community development - while coping with continuous societal and pedagogical changes as well as evolving information technology opportunities and demands.
The conference, organised on the basis of four themes, will explore measures to enhance the competitiveness of universities through educational facilities: Quality Assurance; Green Campuses; University Facilities and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs); and Facility Management System (FMS) of University Facilities.
Contact: alastair.blyth@oecd.org.
6-8 December 2009, International Conference on Higher Education Spaces and Places: for Learning, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange, Riga, Latvia, co-organised by OECD/CELE with the University of Latvia: conference website, programme and materials.
21-23 May 2008, International Conference on Higher Education: Spaces and Places for Learning, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer, Helsinki University of Technology, Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland.
Presentations made at the international PEB seminar "Higher Education Facilities: Issues and Trends" in Zacatecas, Mexico, 29–30 May 2006.
Presentations made at the international PEB seminar "The Changing Infrastructure of Tertiary Education" held in Quebec, Canada, in October 1999. This seminar was organised by PEB, the Ministère de l'Éducation du Québec and the Association of Institutional Property Managers, with the participation of the OECD Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE).
For more information, contact Alastair Blyth: alastair.blyth@oecd.org.

Europe's competitiveness lies in its capacity to innovate and transfer knowledge to society for economic growth. More than ever before the triangle of Education, Research and Innovation is crucial. Higher Education institutions know they have a crucial role to play in the new EU 2020 strategy set by the European Union.
The richness of European Higher Education lies in the diversity of its HEIs, but to support the major challenges, European universities must modernize their governance, management and modes of operation. The increasing competition in the Higher Education sector demands growing levels of quality, leadership and professionalisation.
Building on more than 20 years, ESMU:
- promotes the strategic developments in European universities
- develops European networks on Higher Education Management
- encourages a learning environment on good management practices through conferences, seminars and training programmes in wide European networks of professionals
- offers benchmarking exercises to support universities with increased institutional performance
- supports universities with their strategic profiling.
ESMU's strong European values, drive for continuous improvement and constant exploration of new areas to promote excellence in universities are at the core of all its activities.
Benchmarking Internationalization
Benchmarking to enhance performance in internationalisation
It is becoming essential for universities to develop the ability to define their rationales and approaches in the international effort, to assess performance according to different strategic objectives and to understand how they compare to their competitors.  
Open to both academics and administrators involved in internationalisation processes, who have a keen interest inthe concepts and practices of benchmarking and its application to internationalisation.
http://www.education-benchmarking.org/
→ New Benchmarking group on internationalisation:
Join the ESMU-EAIE Benchmarking group on internationalisation due to start in January 2012. For more information, check detailed information here and/or contact the Benchmarking Secretariat (Inês Proença: projects@esmu.be).

EUA’s Autumn conference in Rotterdam (23-25 October 2008) will consider how best to promote the development of inclusive and responsive universities able to cope with the numerous challenges facing European universities.
These challenges include the changing demography of Europe; global competition and the simultaneous demands to respond better to specific local/regional needs; and new modes of knowledge production and transmission. Participants in Rotterdam will discuss how universities deal with these challenges and what being an ‘inclusive and responsive university’ means in this changing environment, while taking account of the different missions of the university.
In order to provide participants with a broad range of topical input, two paper sessions are scheduled in the conference programme. EUA is therefore issuing a call for papers (download here).

La première séance de négociation sur la formation professionnelle s’est ouverte le 30 septembre 2008 dans une ambiance très constructive. Le MEDEDF aborde cette négociation avec la volonté de faire de la formation professionnelle à la fois un levier de compétitivité pour les entreprises et un facteur de promotion sociale pour les personnes. Trois objectifs : redéfinir les enjeux et priorités, simplicité et opérationnalité, faire plus et mieux avec moins de moyens. Un challenge auquel s’attaque Jean-François Pilliard, chef de file de la délégation patronale, au rythme d’une séance tous les quinze jours. A consulter : Déclaration des organisations syndicales de salariés et d’employeurs à l’occasion de l’ouverture de la négociation sur la formation professionnelle, le 30 septembre 2008.
MEDEF: Gøre uddannelse af en løftestang for virksomheder, som en faktor for social fremme for mennesker. Se: Erklæring af fagforeninger for arbejdstagerne og arbejdsgiverne for at markere åbningen af handel på erhvervsuddannelse, den 30. september 2008. Mere...