THE NEW ISSUES OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH TERITORIAL PUBLIC POLICIES
THE NEW ISSUES OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH TERITORIAL PUBLIC POLICIES

Summary/Abstract: In order to bring our contribution to those issues and to provide some answers, even partial ones, to the most complex question: « What part does French higher education play in present day society? », our argumentation is articulated around such axes as: higher education governance and its environmental constraints, and the autonomy limits of higher education. If the objective as regards public policy is to build a common higher education space, capable of encouraging cooperation and exchanges between institutions and the students’ and professors’ mobility, by seeking, even experimenting, new modes of harmonization, the universities seek to preserve their autonomy by identifying measures of social innovation and the mobilization of the social partners as well as both the individual and collective actors in the processes of transformation of higher education. However, the results show that some universities are being confronted with budget and financial difficulties and could, in a near future, be placed under tutorship, thus creating a new paradoxical situation, considering the political will to lead the universities towards a greater autonomy for the sake of their modernization and of international competition. The pressing necessity to change modes of governance is once more highlighted here with the incitement to encourage a real process of consultation and democratic mobilization.

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