France picks first premier league universities

Lyon:universities to be united around two campuses.

Years of under investment have left university buildings and student housing in a poor condition, and most of the new money will be invested to renew or extend facilities.

But ambitions in science appear also to have been a determining condition in the first selection process. Lyon, for example, is planning to unite its universities around two campuses, one for renewable energy research and the other for life sciences. Also, the choice has favoured university mergers, such as that proposed in Strasbourg.

Most of the money comes from the sale of a tranche of shares of the public electricity utility EDF for €3.7 billion last December. For some, this was disappointing because the sale did not reach the €5 billion objective announced by president Nicolas Sarkozy. But the French government has indicated it is ready to sell more shares in future when market conditions are favourable.

 The money raised to date will not be transferred directly to universities, but is invested in an endowment fund that is expected to generate proceeds of €250 million per year. This will be used to pay the public-private partnerships that will build and operate the renewed or new facilities over the next 25 years.

The eight-member committee headed by Gilles Pelisson, president of French hotels group Accor, will now continue the selection process, naming ten further campuses in June. In all, Plan Campus will select 19 campuses from 46 applicants among France’s 83 universities. It is expected that 340,000 students and 13,000 researchers will benefit the investments.

The first projects to be selected favour university and engineering school collaborations. That is precisely why none of the numerous universities in Paris were selected for funding in this round.

It may also signal of a breakdown of classic French centralism, though campuses like Paris Est still have a good chance to be selected later in June. But one of the favourites, Saclay’s campus projects have been rejected even though this area of southern Paris is home to highly regarded schools like Polytechnique and Centrale, and universities like Orsay. The institutions made two competing bids, and they both have been rejected. They will have to unite before late June, or see the money go elsewhere.