What it's like Studying at a French Public University

From sitting on the floor in lectures, to sitting in a beer garden on campus, here are the details of what the French ‘fac’ is like according to my year spent in a French public university.

Four years ago, I wholeheartedly believed that I belonged in a Parisian higher education establishment, the Sorbonne University to be exact, and repulsed at the idea of settling for anything less. Fast forward a couple of years later, and it’s the biggest ‘I dodged a bullet moment’ I think I’ve ever had. I decided to go back to the UK and begin my Bachelor’s degree there (deciding not to study in Paris is a whole other story in itself and something I’ll go into in another blog article!), and have now experienced two years of higher education in England (although most of that has been online unfortunately), and one year in a French institution as part of my Year Abroad. My experience of the French university has been mixed, whether pertaining to infrastructure, resources, academic excellence, pastoral support, communications etc, and which I will describe for you below.

'France's higher education system is rather elitist'

Firstly, I want to start off in prefacing that I attended a public university in France, what they would call a ‘fac’, or a ‘faculty’. This essentially means that students don’t pay for their studies (I think they pay an administrative fee of about two hundred euros, but that’s it) and these types of institutions are usually considered the lower rungs of the academic ladder to put it crudely, as the fac has to accept any student having obtained their ‘baccalaureate’, or high school diploma. France’s higher education system is rather elitist in that you can pay to go to more prestigious business schools or ‘grandes écoles’ instead, that usually train up aspiring engineers, bankers or economists, with most of the students having a very good chance of ending up in government or high paying jobs afterwards. These types of grandes écoles are highly competitive, and for the most part, aren’t usually inclusive of arts-related subjects either. Bearing in mind that I attended one of these state-funded faculties, this has been my experience:

'The (buildings) gave the impression that an apocalypse had recently taken place'

To start us off, the fact each student is not paying nine grand a year to the establishment, is definitely reflected in the infrastructure and the quality of the facilities. Admittedly, in the ‘fac’ I attended in particular, the arts and languages/literature buildings did seem quite archaic and under-funded. They gave the impression that an apocalypse had recently taken place (think unfriendly concrete structures, shutters and blinds hanging uncertainly off the windows, grass uncut and unkempt). Inside, general seating areas were lacking; students took to eating their lunch in stairwells and near vending machines. Even in the lecture theatres themselves, there sometimes weren’t enough benches to accommodate everyone, forcing students to sprawl out on the steps between rows, laptops balanced upon knees. In terms of having your lunch, there were cafes and eateries of course, but if you wanted to go somewhere without paying (and the library prohibited food), then your best chance might be to risk sitting outside somewhere, weather depending. Not only were there not sufficient places to eat, but there seemed to be insufficient places to study as well. The libraries became packed at peak times, and there simply just weren’t any table plus chair set ups elsewhere throughout the premises, let alone power outlets to charge your laptop. I will say though, that the ‘main street’ on the outside of the faculty did offer an impressive number of shops and facilities. To list a few: a post office, laundrette, driving school, osteopath, newsagent, and numerous cafes and restaurants, where you could indulge in a three course lunch, or even just go for a pint, right in the middle of campus, no questions (or I.D.s) asked.

'I spent half my time just watching the teachers stood far way from where I sat, trailing a microphone on a lead, that barely amplified their voices'

Moving onto the university classes themselves, I would say it’s a mixed bag both in France and in the UK. You do get very knowledgeable and well-versed lecturers in both countries, and then you get some who can have you leaving the lecture theatre having grasped and retained nothing. However I will say, that when I’ve experienced the latter in the UK, there will always be the chance for me to revisit the lecture online, whether via a PowerPoint, or via a recording of the lecture itself if I’m lucky. Most notably, if I’ve failed to comprehend a lecture, there will always be some sort of further reading or research that the lecturer leaves at the end of the slide show, so I’ll at least stand half a chance of getting myself up to scratch online instead. Unfortunately, in the French fac I attended, this just wasn’t the case. Not only do the majority of lecturers not provide a PowerPoint or any kind of literature on the topic, with nothing being available on the online platforms like ‘Moodle’ that are supposed to compliment the physical learning, but I felt like I spent half my time just watching the teachers stood far away from where I sat, trailing a microphone on a lead, that barely amplified their voices. This forced me to scavenge notes from the laptop screens of students sat in front of me if I wanted even half the chance of jotting anything down. And unfortunately, not all lectures had accompanying seminars, in which you usually consolidate the work of the lecture in a more initiate environment with far less students, once again meaning that if you hadn’t understood what you were supposed to understand first time round, there was no time for a second try. This meant I was certainly ropey in some subjects/concepts and couldn’t even hope to reference a bibliography to help alleviate my sense of loss.

'It very much reminded me of my GCSE days in the UK'

When it came to exam season, feeing lost became a regular, if not intensified emotion. Teachers didn’t seem to offer any direction in terms of how we were to be examined, or how to prepare, and the exams themselves took on a more high school question-and-answer approach. Everything seemed to be very much memory-orientated. You remembered historical facts, names, theories; there was no evaluation, and hardly any personal expression. We didn’t do any coursework. It very much reminded me of my GCSE days in the UK. And as per what I previously stated above, retaining information was only okay if you wrote in down and understood it in the first place, otherwise you simply had to invent your answers, like I seemed to be doing for the most part. And did I forget to mention that all my classes and exams were indeed in French as well? Making it 100% harder to grasp concepts thoroughly and relay them with academic flair and integrity in an exam environment.

'I felt positively scarred in any interaction I had to have with (the staff)'

The staff themselves didn’t cast much light on these situations either. I mentioned that lecturers didn’t offer much academic support, but it seemed there wasn’t any improvement when conversing to the administrative staff either. In fact, I felt positively scarred in any interaction I had to have with them. The French are known for being fairly straight to the point, even if that risks coming across as rude (or at least it does to us Anglophones), but the experiences I had with the staff were just plain unhelpful and exasperating. When asking for advice, if the person you were communicating with, thought you ought to already know the answer to the question you were asking, they would tell you, and not politely. It seemed they had lost any appreciation of how it is for students who aren’t fluent in the language, and who are in a completely unfamiliar environment, simply looking for someone to point them in the right direction. And if they believed the query you have doesn’t concern them, or doesn’t correspond to their department, they will not take the step to refer you elsewhere. Hence finding information becomes an endless rabbit hunt, and I would often feel quite perplexed and on the verge of offended as to why my emails should solicit such animated responses.

'It just felt like an extension of high school for me, with the naughty kids at the back, not bothering if they were ruining it for everyone else'

Finally I want to talk about the French students themselves, and how what I mentioned about the reputation of these types of ‘facs’ plays a role in their attitudes when it comes to learning. Wherever you study in the world, in whatever facility, no matter how reputed or not, you will come across students with a lack of motivation, or who aren’t paying attention in lessons, it’s pretty much a given. But the extent to which the students seemed deflated in the fac that I attended, did seem quite concerning. For example, it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for students to slump on their desks in the middle of a lecture to take a nap, with some of them sleeping through the entire lesson. Others would spend the time on phones, scrolling through social media, or playing games on laptops. I even had a lecture where the students were idly, and quite animatedly, talking between themselves, that the lecturer had to interrupt them over ten times to tell them to keep quiet. I remember curling my toes and feeling an incredible sense of second hand embarrassment: why would these students, who are supposed to be adults, have such blatant disrespect towards the lecturers, and an obvious disregard towards their own learning as well as that of others? It all just felt like an extension of high school to me, with the naughty kids at the back, not bothering if they were ruining it for everyone else.

Then it occurred to me: what was causing them to act this way? Was it because they struggled to get the academic support they needed from the teachers? Or that they felt the exams were so badly designed that they might never graduate? Or that they didn’t have adequate enough facilities in which to knuckle down and actually study? Perhaps because I was in a lot of first year classes, it was your typical case of adolescents struggling to adapt to a more independent way of studying, or perhaps it is due to all the factors I have just mentioned. Either way, the one thing I can say for sure, is that if you don’t finesse the system here in France, it will certainly finesse you, and not even the education being free can erase that.

'(The students) seemed genuinely passionate and forward-thinking young people, who were eager to fight for their rights'

What I will say though, is that not all the students were oblivious to this, and they wanted change. Often in lectures, we would be interrupted by students running for the equivalent of a student council, who would hand out flyers detailing the issues the university was facing, and what they were prepared to do about it. I remember there was talk of the President Macron making the facs fee-paying establishments, and scrapping the free higher education all together, and you bet the students made a noise about this. And it wasn’t in a showy way either; they seemed genuinely passionate and forward-thinking young people, who were eager to fight for their rights, and I found it thoroughly inspiring. It made me cast my thoughts to my home university: how we all just sat and witnessed strike after strike and cancelled lessons, watching as the quality of our education dwindled, as well the introduction of online learning which sucked away the university experience we were all paying for in such high amounts, with no compromise of a fee reduction. We did nothing about it, so nothing changed. The French students rallied against the suggestion of fee-paying higher education, and guess what, it was never actually implemented.

'No smoke without fire'

What I might sum up from this, is that there’s no smoke without fire. I saw the consequences of an establishment in need of some TCL, and students not reaching their full potential due to poor academic service in some cases, but I also saw passion and drive to make a difference, and the indignant attitude that education should be for all, and shouldn’t be about profit. I think we both have flawed higher education systems in both France and the UK, but one thing I will always remember about my university experience in France, is things may not be perfect, but we take to the streets and make a noise until they are. Oh, and sitting having a pint on campus at 11am, truly the authentic French experience.