Boosting Research Performance in France with Ten Simple Actions/Ideas

• Convert professors/researchers existing salaries to nine months compensation and allow them to get summer pay through grants to counter effect the absence of internationally competitive salaries
• Increase the expected PhD duration from three years to four years while allowing them to enroll for a fifth year as well while lightening the requirements/expectations regarding the final PhD manuscript (it takes approx six months to be prepared currently)
• Increase the maximum number of PhD students under supervision to eight, and remove the HDR condition as well as the CNU qualifications to become a professor or replace existing elected panels from international transparent committees
• Increase competitive funding, through the Agence nationale de la recherche and remove bureaucratic and completely obscure rules. Reduce the dispersion of the funding agencies and improve the process of grants submission evaluation, as well as make the whole system more transparent and more agile
• Restructure industrial benefits when funding research through competitive calls. Replace the "Industrial Research Credit" with a more competitive funding referring to joint state-industry funding of proposals where industry supports its own funding
• Introduce mechanisms to increase the absorption of PhDs from the industry as well as encourage industry to offer them competitive salaries towards encouraging and motivating excellent students to pursue graduate studies
• Introduce half year sabbatical leaves formally with salary preservation
• Rethink the duration of the probation period prior to become a state/permanent researcher/professor
• Improve the attractiveness of France to foreign professors in particular at the early stage of their career through more flexible and better paid appointments, where promotions are decided at the school level
• Merge teaching departments with research labs while removing the hierarchical/pyramidal structure/organization of research labs and introduce regular rotation on the upper management

Grande Ecoles @ France and their Mutation @ International Educational Ecosystem

Grande Ecoles have been in the French Higher Educational Ecosystem form almost three centuries and have greatly contributing on paving the way to the French industrial revolution. Their success recipe is not that complex: get the best of the best, at a rather mature age (that often corresponds to almost a B.Sc. degree in the Anglo-Saxon system) with an exceptional background on sciences through highly competitive exams and then offer them a general culture academic curriculum towards providing means of further enrichment for their potentials. The system is pretty rounded, and the success has been there mostly due to the exceptional quality of the preparatory classes of the highly competitive admission selection process. 

Such a system was a win-to-win situation for the students/Grande Ecoles. Students were certain to graduate (Grande Ecoles couldn’t allow dropouts - it was harming their reputation - that were extreme exceptions and in many cases the degrees are not associated with grading/distinctions) and their degree could secure a highly successful professional career (mostly nationally) either at the public or private sector. Grande Ecoles through this process managed to build gradually a powerful network/community holding key positions at the private and public sector and their graduates become policy/decision-makers and contributed on putting the grounds for the increasing influence of these Ecoles at the French society. The system at it was had almost no forgetting memory, what was really important was the success admission after the preparatory classes and the graduation from a Grande Ecole in conjunction with the individual career path. 

On the downhill (until recently where we observe a real change of direction), research was insignificant (with some notable but still small number of exceptions) at these schools, international exposure was absent, while at the same time expected students efforts during their studies were “accommodated” to be minimal. I recall discussing with the three different deans of academic studies in three different schools who did explain me that the percentage of the dropouts is so small simply because our students are so well trained and so carefully selected, so even the worst ones could determine the minimal required effort to graduate. These elements have been propagated to the French industrial ecosystem resulting on a substantial diminishment of the importance of “graduate studies” like for example M.Sc. or PhD as well professional mobility and continuous learning. Students at their most productive years, with exceptional abilities were taught that the most important thing is already achieved that was the admission at the Grande Ecole and the rest will come even though in most of the cases excellent academic programs were at their disposal. 

Then, French industrial tissue became international, degrees of Grande Ecoles world-wide became not as important as the ones of the top international schools (MIT, Oxford, ETH,…) due to the lack of visibility of these schools outside France (in particular in the absence of strong research portfolio) and lack of graduate studies which is a natural manner of attracting foreigner students and spreading the reputation of the school worldwide.  The generous support of the French state, gave the possibility to these schools to live beyond their means. International collaborations and double degrees were initiated at proportions (given the number of students) with unfortunately highly unbalanced flow of incoming/outgoing students of same international university-reputation. Furthermore, towards addressing the research gap, the schools have started pursuing more aggressive policy towards convincing their own students to pursue graduate studies which definitely doesn't contribute much on improving result visibility of these schools through imprinting. The important thing is to get excellent graduate admissions from other top-level schools and send your own students to them. These creates a flow and contributes on increasing research perspectives. However, due to the absence of a centrally organized admission system for graduate studies at these schools, their visibility was limited and in most of the cases international admissions are due the reputation of the professor and not the one of the school. The small number of students of these schools (and consequently the number of faculty as well), the wide thematic academic program spread, the lack of research investment and the declining support of the state funding have contributed constraining the impact of their footprint at the international ecosystem. 

What didn’t change though was the amazing/exceptional quality of the admitted students and their extreme potentials. The maturity of these students is often equivalent to the ones of the graduate students at the top Anglo-Saxon Universities.

It is obvious that given the inevitable decline of the state support the current system cannot sustain - unless moving towards the Anglo-Saxon system with the aberration of tuition fees which will be really unfortunate - and a modality culture change should be envisioned. 

International exchange programs with an insignificant return-to- investment are not sustainable. Such collaborations should  be preserved but combine research excellence and academic interest and should involve equitable partnerships. The general engineering culture should be preserved at the beginning of the educational curriculum, however better organization should be envisioned in the final years towards areas where these schools can make the difference. These should be well identified areas with top level academic faculty supporting the ambitions of these schools and targeting emerging / demanding needs of the society from the scientific view point. But most importantly, consensus/mutual understanding/sharing the resources between these schools is inevitable at least regarding the general engineering culture academic program. Differentiation should happen through focus on different research and department majors. Being in all possible areas of engineering is neither possible nor sustainable for these schools. It is better being the leader on a subset of sciences than no-one everywhere.

There is nothing wrong being small (Caltech is a small school both in terms of faculty and number of students), the problem arises when the lack of resources is associated with the dispersion of efforts, a combination that completely diminishes the potentials of the effort. 

To conclude, these schools should mutually mutate to a new era, become more competitive at international level both in terms of academic focus/offer as well as research portfolio.  This can only happen through a profound change of the vision of decision/policy-makers as well as a colossal progress on the mentalities of the past, current and future graduates of these schools.