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French university management reforms: critical perspectives from a legal point of view

  • Review Article
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French Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Taking the French public university system as a case study, this paper offers a legal analysis to interpret the conflicting perspectives regarding the recent evolution of university management and academics’ traditional working organization. The progressive implementation of new public management reforms gives university managers a strategic role. However, the rise of managerial authority faces recurrent criticism from academics claiming it threatens their traditions and freedoms. After reviewing the most decisive university reforms, we reassess the unique legal features of the French academic organization. We particularly focus on the civil servant status, decision-making procedures such as faculty recruitment, and legal protections such as the principles of academics’ independence. We analyze the legal academics’ motives for opposing recent management reforms, and we recast their request as protecting academic freedoms with proper legal safeguards. This study aims to recall the decisive importance of legal proceedings while considering university reforms. It also aims to contribute to a larger debate by highlighting conflicting perspectives opposing market-inspired reforming processes and nation-centric elite reproduction.

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Notes

  1. The objective of this paper is not to provide a complete definition of the new public management techniques. We assume that NPM has become a common conceptual device which is now structuring most of the discussion related to university reforms. We take for granted that NPM’s main goal is to challenge traditional organization with new forms of management control.

  2. In French “Université française” with a capital “u” refers to the state-managed public system that comprises (almost) all French universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Maxime Renaudie

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  1. Maxime Renaudie
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Correspondence to Maxime Renaudie.

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This paper results from a comparative research project related to French and Japanese higher education reforms, funded by the Japanese Society for Promotion for Science (JSPS). The author is thankful to Marc-André Chavy-Macdonald and Roberto Orsi for proofreading.

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Renaudie, M. French university management reforms: critical perspectives from a legal point of view. Fr Polit 16, 96–116 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41253-017-0049-2

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