French Higher Education Governance after Shanghai

Abstract

This article 1 explores the recent higher education governance reforms in France, which can be viewed as the result of tensions between historical legacies and transnational competitive pressures. While most recent research on the i nternationalization or Europeanization of higher education focusses on the Bologna Process, I show that other factors such as in ternational compar a- tive rankings and domestic public sector reforms are crucial variables in explaining changing patterns go v- ernance. In a state of gradual change since the mid - 1980s (Musselin 2001), French higher educ ation has recently undergone extensive reforms, which were a c- celerated after the very poor performance of French uni versities in the Shanghai Ranking. Once considered to be the epitome of state -centeredness and educational immobilisme , French educational policy -makers have recently embarked on a quest for international legitim a- cy and increasingly aligned themselves with external models perceived as successful. While the ongoing reforms have most frequently been described as “mar- ketization”, I show that the reality is more complex and that Frenc h higher education has also taken on nume r- ous characteristics of Humboldtism (i.e., research - centered universities) while maintaining its traditionally strong degree of state design and intervention