Focus on France: École Polytechnique goes for growth

The École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, outside Paris.

The expansion plan, for 2007 through 2011, is aimed partly at raising the school’s scientific impact and profile internationally, said Philippe Alquier, staff director.

“We consider ourselves among the best universities in the world today, but in the international rankings we aren’t well recognised – and one of the reasons is our [small] size,” Alquier said. “If we want to have the place that is rightfully ours, we have to have a very ambitious programme.”

L’École Polytechnique is, of course, famous as a French institution – one of the country’s prestigious “Grandes Écoles.” Founded in 1794, it was chartered a decade later by Napoleon as a school for military engineers – “pour la patrie, les sciences et la gloire”. It remains today under the Ministry of Defence, and most students at its expansive, green campus in Palaiseau, a Paris suburb, wear the uniforms of military cadets. Over the years, its alumni have included Marshalls Joffre and Foch, mathematicians Poincaré and Cauchy, and industrialists Citroen and Schlumberger.

Punching below its weight

But it punches below its weight internationally. Its industrial research contracts total just €10 million, according to its website. And, according to one widely followed global ranking compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, it fits into the broad, middling band of universities ranking between 201st and 300th in the world.

The success of the expansion plan will depend on the school winning new government and industrial contracts, at home and abroad. At present, 86.5 per cent of the school’s annual €160 million budget comes from various state agencies; and on 11 January the most important of those, the Ministry of Defence, renewed its five-year contract with the school. But the new plan envisions an expansion of other financing sources, as well – to 21 per cent of the budget, from 13.5 per cent currently. In addition, 50 per cent of the planned capital costs would come from industry, alumni and other non-state sources. In this drive, it’s aided by being the centre of one of the new French technology clusters – so-called “poles of competitiveness” – that the government has been aggressively promoting to foster collaboration between industry and state research.

At present, the school’s strongest research fields include information technology and theoretical and nuclear physics; it’s a participant, for instance, in a new international fusion reactor under development in Cadarache, France. Under its new plan, it will be pushing to expand research in four areas: biological sciences; optics, nanotechnology and materials; information and communications technologies; and economics and finance.

Five-year expansion plan

As part of this, Alquier said, the school is targeting several industries and international partners for expansion. The five-year plan includes:

• Opening new research centres that, along with other expansion projects under consideration, would increase the campus population to about 6,000 from 4,000 today.
  
  
• Expanding links with industry. That includes getting more industrial research contracts and collaborations – but also bringing the school’s students and teachers closer to industry through company-funded chairs, “enterprise clubs” and other programmes. It has five company chairs at present, with six more in the works.
  
  
• Increasing international partnerships, with industries and with other universities. It said it will be working, through the ParisTech association of Grandes Écoles, with Imperial College London, TU Delft, RWTH Aachen and ETH-Zurich, among others.
  
  
• Fostering more spin-out companies from the school. It has just seven such companies on campus today, but it is planning to build a start-up incubator facility with regional development authorities in Saclay, to help researchers wanting to start their own companies. With the help of alumni and others, it is also planning to expand its currently small spin-out fund to provide seed financing to spin-outs.
  
  
• Expanding its graduate school, conferring more masters’ and doctoral degrees.
  
  
• Continuing improvements to its undergraduate programmes –  for instance, increasing contact with industry and training in biology, and steering more students towards doctoral programmes.
  
  
• Attracting more students from abroad, including China, India and Brazil. The school currently has about 100 non-French students in each of its 500-member year groups, and about 35 per cent of its masters and doctoral students are foreign.