The Sorbonne has no cafeteria, no student newspaper, no varsity sports, no desk-side plugs for laptop users. France's most renowned university also costs next-to-nothing to attend, and admission is open to everyone who has finished high-school, REPORTED AP. President Nicolas Sarkozy says this picture is emblematic of much that is wrong with France, which is seeking to recapture its luster as it sees its economy outstripped by Asian rivals and its voice in international affairs grow increasingly dim. Many students fear the newly elected president is out to abolish the French university as they know it, and are already plotting resistance. Campuses, long a flashpoint of protest in France, are shaping up as the first battleground for Sarkozy's grand plans for reform. Days after Sarkozy was elected, students blockaded the Tolbiac campus of the University of Paris in a pre-emptive protest. Students have gathered to strategize in Toulouse and Nanterre. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Wednesday that a bill on granting universities more autonomy would be presented to parliament in July _ when schools are closed and potential protesters on vacation. Sarkozy has promised to modernize France's notoriously complex public services. The Sorbonne, one of the world's oldest universities in the heart of Paris, and the focal point of student protests last spring, paints a picture of what he's up against. High dropout rates, antiquated resources, and funding cuts have so plagued the Sorbonne _ like universities across France and Europe _ that its president, Jean-Robert Pitte, is calling for an overhaul of the entire university system. He wants to make admission selective and introduce tuition fees to increase budgets, measures critics call «Americanization.» French universities «don't correspond to the needs of the economy, to French society, and even less to Europe and the world,» Pitte said in an interview. «I'm pragmatic. I watch what happens elsewhere, hool diploma a free education. Financial barriers were to be leveled with generous grants. Nearly 40 years later, the free and democratic universities are producing far fewer graduates than its more costly counterparts in the United States. In 2005, only 14.2 percent of adults had a university education in France, compared to 29.4 percent in the United States, according to the OECD. Pitte says the French system just produces dropouts. Forty-five percent of Sorbonne students do not complete their first year of university, and 55 percent do not finish their degrees. Without entrance standards, there is a «selection-by-failure» that squanders resources and professors' time on weak students who «have no real chance of success,» he said. The Sorbonne is all the more difficult to reform because it has an intrinsic link to Paris' Left Bank intellectual history, which students are keen to preserve. And while French students cits and student discounts on everything from train travel to movie tickets. Free universities aren't the only choice for French students. There's also a parallel system of «grandes ecoles» that educates the French elite. With 6 percent of post-secondary students, the grandes ecoles have difficult entrance exams and charge up to ¤5,000 (US$6,700) a year, but offer small classes and graduate nearly all the country's business leaders and politicians. «We're the street-sweepers of the education system,» Pitte said, picking up all those who fail to make it into the grandes ecoles. No tuition also means that universities are starved for money and short on the services that North American schools take for granted. The Sorbonne also has no alumni associations, robbing it of the donations so essential to budgets on the other side of the Atlantic. And without access to outside resources _ corporate funding is prohibited _ the universities are crumbling. The University of Shanghai publishes a world-ranking of universities, and in 2005, the top French University placed 46th, behind more than 30 American institutions. Sarkozy has included university reform in his four top priorities to be passed during an exceptional parliamentary session this summer. His immediate proposals include ¤15 billion for universities, which would increase their budgets by 50 percent, as well as more freedom. Pitte wants to use that freedom to limit numbers of students in disciplines that have few job opportunities upon graduation, and introduce tuition fees of ¤3,000 (US$4,000). «Nobody should be prevented from doing university studies,» said Pitte. But to let students who aren't cut out for it into the system «is criminal.»
