De la situation faite à l'enseignement supérieur

On the Situation Facing Higher Education in France — II.

Ferdinand Lot

CHAPTER V Physical Facilities in the Provinces (I. The Buildings. — II. Student Residences)

I. THE BUILDINGS

When, after a stay abroad, one returns to France, the first impression is disagreeable. The provincial cities are petty, poorly maintained, without activity, without comfort. Oh! The sad cities without parks, without greenery — compared to German, Swiss, and Belgian towns, full of movement, cheerful, and smiling! Perhaps the impression is never more disheartening than when one passes from a German university town to a French university town. To cite but one example, visit Nancy — one of our “great” Universities — after having seen Strasbourg. I defy anyone not to feel a keen sense of humiliation. Compare the granite and marble palace of the “German” Faculty of Letters with the stable that bears that name in Nancy! The French are slandered when accused of vanity. That fault is entirely foreign to them.

Very often, one cannot even see the University. Look for it in Dijon. You will find three or four old buildings scattered in the four corners of the city. In Toulouse, the Faculties of Law and Letters are cramped on a narrow street; the Faculties of Science and Medicine are at the other end of town.

One may still find adequate facilities for the Faculties of Science, sometimes of Medicine. But everywhere, the Faculties of Letters and Faculties of Law are housed in a shameful and sometimes truly squalid manner. Even in the Faculties of large cities, in those recently built (Lyon, Lille, Toulouse), the situation leaves much to be desired. Neither the architects, nor the Administration, nor the professors themselves had a clear conception of what a Faculty should be. A lecture hall, two or three classrooms, an office for the dean, a corridor for hanging hats and overcoats — that is too often what the Faculty of Letters consists of — and the Faculty of Law as well.

It was forgotten that Art History requires a plaster-cast museum and large rooms for photographic reproductions; that Geography needs large spaces for wall maps, relief models, etc.; that Psycho-physics requires a laboratory. Students must not be reduced to wandering the streets between classes: a common room is necessary. And above all, it is indispensable that each specialty be assigned a room, small or large, furnished with essential reference books within reach, a room where the professor gives his seminars, where students meet without interruption from nine in the morning until ten at night. It is in these intimate corners that the good “seminar” work is done, as the Germans say. The student is sure to meet his classmates and his teacher there. He works there with profit and with gaiety. The large reading room of the Library, where it is forbidden to open one’s mouth, to discuss a difficulty with one’s professors and fellow students, can in no way replace these small busy hives where the best of the worker’s time passes. Paris possesses a few of them, poorly arranged and too few — at the Sorbonne. They are still lacking in most provincial Universities.

The hovels called “Faculties of Letters” are too cramped to accommodate the eight or ten study rooms required by a Faculty of Letters and a Faculty of Law. In Lyon they succeeded only by using the attics. But elsewhere it is physically impossible, for lack of space, and one sees the Faculty of Letters at Nancy complaining of “not even having attics.”

Sometimes Law and Letters have been placed in an old “University Palace,” built under the Empire by an inexperienced architect, also serving the Sciences and even Medicine. When the decision was made twenty years ago to house the Faculties in decent premises, the first thought — quite rightly — was of Medicine and the Sciences. But, for lack of funds, the construction of new buildings has too often dragged on, so that the Faculties of Law and Letters remain in the status quo.

Everywhere it is the same spectacle. Everything drags on in interminable negotiations for lack of an effective subsidy from the State. Or, when one is offered, it is insufficient.

Even in localities where something is achieved, the result is petty. This word “petty” characterizes, moreover, everything done in France. It seems that in our country we no longer know how to do things on a grand scale.

Now this is absolutely necessary. We will never achieve scientific and artistic decentralization in France with a numerically insufficient staff, indigent libraries, uncomfortable, old, dirty, and scattered buildings. There are cities where one cannot even see the University. The inhabitants themselves seem unaware of its existence.

All this must change. Each university town must take pride in its University, must know it to be beautiful, pleasant to see and to frequent, filled with teachers.

To achieve this goal, money is needed. Oh! not enormously so. There is no question of Americanism. But some is needed. The cities are generally full of good will. The obstacle, as I have already said regarding personnel, is the department. It is neither rich enough nor populous enough to bear its share of expense, which in Germany falls upon the province. We must make an exception, however, for the departments of the Nord, the Rhone, the Gironde, and the Bouches-du-Rhone. Thus the aid of the State, though necessary, is less pressing for the Faculties of Letters and Law at Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, and Marseille. For all the others the State must fill the role of “province,” for the departments of ancient Normandy, Brittany, Dauphine, Burgundy, Franche-Comte, Lorraine, Auvergne, Poitou, etc., which do not possess Faculties, have no interest in them. The generosity of a departmental council may extend to maintaining one or two scholarship holders, or giving a 500-franc subsidy to the agricultural chemistry laboratory, but that will be all.

The assistance of the State therefore appears as particularly indispensable for the ten Universities of Besancon, Caen, Clermont, Dijon, Grenoble, Montpellier, Nancy, Poitiers, Rennes, and Toulouse.

Regarding the Faculty of Letters and the University in general, Montpellier is neither cramped nor spacious; its situation is, on the whole, satisfactory. For Aix, the only remedy is the transfer to Marseille. Otherwise, there is not even any point in bothering with it.

We therefore need to concern ourselves at present with only nine Faculties, which we will review in order of importance. Since the possible improvements for the Faculties of Letters are linked to those of the other Faculties, we shall say a word about the latter as occasion arises.

Nancy. — Deplorable facilities: a lecture hall too small, two inadequate classrooms, an office for the dean, an examination room. It is absolutely shameful. This Faculty cannot expand on site, nor can the Faculty of Law, except by: 1) transferring the School of Pharmacy next to the Faculty of Medicine; 2) relocating the Physics services of the Faculty of Science. The latter is requesting a Physics Institute, which would be built next to the Chemistry Institute. The cost would amount to 500,000 francs, which is not excessive if one considers that the Faculty of Science at Nancy is our leading provincial Faculty of this kind. Physics there is taught by two professors of European renown, Bichat and Blondlot. The latter is the inventor of the famous N-rays. Thanks to this last effort, Nancy, while far from presenting the magnificent aspect of Strasbourg, would possess a very adequate installation for the Sciences. The departure of the Physics service and the School of Pharmacy would finally allow Law and Letters to settle in comfortably.

Toulouse. — The buildings rebuilt fifteen to twenty years ago are too cramped — as always. The Faculty of Letters can only expand by purchasing a neighboring barracks. The War Office is asking 150,000 francs for it, a sum that is, it seems, greatly exaggerated. The Faculty preferred not to be exploited. But since it received not a sou in the distribution of the one-million-franc loan contracted two years ago by the University (for the benefit of Science and Medicine), there is no way out of this situation.

Rennes. — Everything was housed in the small and inconvenient “University Palace” inaugurated forty years ago. The situation was intolerable. The construction of the Faculty of Science was supposed to bring relief. The space freed up was to go to the Faculties of Law and Letters. But the construction dragged on, and when the building was completed and inaugurated, it was discovered — as always — that it was too small. An annex is being built at this moment. In the meantime, the natural history collections still clutter the old “palace.” So that the Faculty of Letters currently consists of two lecture halls, one holding sixty to eighty people and the other thirty to forty; plus two seminar rooms that are too small (fifteen people at most!); plus a meeting room for professors and an office for the dean. Archaeology and Art History, which lack professors anyway, are represented by a few plaster casts in a corridor.

A vital question for this University, small but active, is the construction of a university library and its merger with the city library. As always, the project has been done small and petty.

Grenoble. — The University, for the past four or five years, has taken on real importance. It tends to become, like Geneva and Zurich, an international University. The French courses taught during the holidays have gradually attracted several hundred students. Some had the idea of studying there for an entire year. So that at present, the movement having grown, this small University is the one that, after Paris, has the most foreign students — Germans, English, Italians. The Faculty of Law is the only one in France whose attendance is considered by the German authorities as equivalent to that of a German Faculty.

This brave little University has not received from the Administration on the Rue de Grenelle the support that its efforts and successes merited. I have already said that the staff of the Faculty of Letters, and even of the Faculty of Science, was scandalously insufficient in number. The facilities, at first glance adequate (they date from 1875), have proved extremely insufficient. It is impossible to fit three Faculties (Science, Letters, Law) and a library in a small rectangular building. Everything is suffocating. The first thing is to remove the library from it and build it a separate location. The space freed up will allow Letters and Law to expand.

Dijon. — Here it is even more comical: the Faculty of Letters has no fixed address and does not know if it will have one. It currently has the right to the following quarters on Rue Monge, in the Academy buildings: one lecture hall of 300 seats, one small lecture hall of 50 seats, one anteroom converted into a seminar room. The University Library is under construction on Rue Chabot-Charny, at the corner of Rue du Petit-Potet. Unfortunately, it is a kilometer from Rue Monge. One can imagine how convenient this is for seminars where professors and students need books for an hour or two! As for the Ministry, it declares it will give nothing. So what?

Caen. — All university services (law, letters, science, medicine) are concentrated in the “University Palace,” an ugly cube of rubble stone in the middle of narrow streets. The State, the City, and the University have just pooled their resources to build a university library (cost 280,000 francs) that will suffice for half a century. It is hoped that its transfer will free up the other wings. But it will certainly be in a very insufficient manner. The Faculty of Letters possesses neither a study room for professors and students, nor an archaeological museum. The small geography equipment is squeezed into a closet. The philosophy professor would like to inaugurate instruction in experimental psychology — impossible, there is no room.

Poitiers. — No space is available for geography, archaeology, or experimental psychology. An excellent means was found to prevent the Faculty from noticing it is cramped: give it no professor of geography, or art history, or psychology. By reducing it to three chairs like a Spanish Faculty, one could even make it think itself spacious.

Clermont-Ferrand. — By an extraordinary occurrence, the City and the State have done something intelligent: they are building, at joint expense, a library merging university and municipal services.

Besancon. — What takes precedence above all is the necessity of building a building for the university library. As long as the current overcrowding lasts, it is useless to think of improving the Faculty of Letters.

Everywhere negotiations are underway — and have been for years — and everywhere the time passes in chatter and paperwork. It would be necessary for the State to make one final sacrifice, once and for all, and not take another ten or fifteen years to negotiate.

For Libraries, Faculties of Letters, and Faculties of Law, everything can be finished in two or three years; it is useless to waste four times more time by spreading the State’s contribution over too many fiscal years.

The sacrifices asked of the central government are, moreover, quite modest. For Letters and Law, the principal “institute” is the Library. Let it be sufficiently spacious, let there be lecture halls, eight to ten small seminar rooms, a plaster-cast museum, and there you have satisfied Faculties for an almost indefinite period. There are few or no surprises with them.

When these various projects have been completed, the physical installation of our Universities will be adequate. But one may regret that, twenty-five years ago, more rational, bolder plans were not drawn up.

One could, without spending much more, have created genuine university cities. Thus in Toulouse, instead of leaving the Faculties of Letters and Law near Saint-Andre in a noisy neighborhood in the midst of barracks — which are failures — it would have been wiser to place them beside the Faculties of Science and Medicine, at the Allees Saint-Michel, in the finest quarter of the city. In Bordeaux, it is regrettable that the cramped and uncomfortable Faculty of Law is left at Place Pey-Berland, the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy cut into two or three pieces.

What might not an intelligent minister or a wealthy private citizen have made of the poor University of Caen! With its fine old churches, its river, its beautiful countryside, the sea so near, one could have made it a little Cambridge. It is well known how passionately the English and Americans care about Normandy, which is almost a homeland for them. Students and their families could have been attracted by the hundreds. But it would have been necessary to attempt something new: to build residential buildings for students. The idea of doing something new and grand appears decidedly foreign to French minds. All one can ask of them is a decent mediocrity, and that is all our Universities demand, honest daughters, curious only for a quite simple cleanliness.

II. STUDENT RESIDENCES

We now approach an entirely new subject: Student Residences. Our provincial towns (with the possible exception of Montpellier), no more than Paris for that matter, are not organized for student life.

This has very grave consequences. People have wondered why French families do not give their children, upon leaving secondary school, the university education so popular in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and the United States. The reasons are not hard to understand. One does not wish to leave a young man, almost a child, without comfort, without supervision as well, in one of our dreary provincial cities. In fact, perhaps three-quarters of provincial students live with their family in the university town, or else the family does not live there and the students register but stay at home and do not attend classes. Foreign families hesitate even more to send their children so far away.

And yet it is certain that our provincial Universities would rapidly have a large foreign clientele (Paris frightens families) if one were sure that young people, at least between eighteen and twenty-one, would find establishments offering room and board, under the supervision of university authorities.

These “student residences” would not consist merely of a building of stone or brick. It would be necessary to find in them, in miniature, the comfort and amenity of Anglo-American Universities. We could not offer foreigners and nationals immense lawns and parks like the Transatlantic institutions. At least one can arrange a fencing and gymnastics hall, showers; one can — in the provinces — offer a garden. Without reaching Anglo-Saxon luxury in the slightest, the “residence” must be a hive of impeccable cleanliness. Each student must have his own room, naturally, or better still a sitting room-study and a small, well-ventilated bedroom. The supervision must be both intelligent and sufficiently firm. This means the “residence” must be directed not by a “civil servant” but by a university professor. Nothing of the “drill sergeant” in its administration.

I shall insist on the interest there is in attracting foreign women. German women assimilate rapidly the customs and ideas of France. English, Scottish, and American women ask only to come to France. Paris attracts them naturally but frightens families. If there existed in the provinces Universities worthy of the name, furnished with a modern organization for studies and residence, Anglo-Saxon women would come in droves to France. This has real importance. In America, in the United States at least, the French language now lives only through women. Despite the optimistic assurances of the press, French is in continuous decline among male students. Barely 30 percent learn to read it; two-thirds stick to German because of the enormous scientific production of our neighbors. Among American women students, on the contrary, two-thirds remain faithful to French.

Almost all our provincial Universities can and should attract foreign men and women. Grenoble, Nancy, even Dijon, are beginning to have a clientele, especially the first. Montpellier has never ceased to see Levantines and Egyptians frequent it. It is extremely important to hasten this movement. Montpellier and Marseille should be genuine intellectual metropolises for the “Africans” of Algeria-Tunisia, the Egyptians, the Levantines, the Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, even the Russians of the Southwest.

I have said that Caen would be — on condition of being transformed — a University for Anglo-Americans. Similarly, though to a lesser extent, Rennes and Poitiers. One should attract Spaniards and Portuguese to Toulouse and Bordeaux. The latter especially should play a great role. Neither Mexico, nor Central America, nor South America has any true University, at least for letters and sciences. For a long time Mexicans, Cubans, Colombians, Argentines, Brazilians knew only one intellectual initiator: France. Then Germany came, but here without great success in competing with us. Today the United States exercises on all these peoples a veritable fascination. Even Paris seems barely able to compete with powerful and perfected institutions like Harvard near Boston, Columbia in New York, Yale in New Haven, Chicago, and Palo Alto in California. But while experiencing the attraction of North America, the Central and South Americans fear it. They might return to us if we had something to offer them and if we reminded them of our existence.

A new organism appears necessary: the “Student Residence,” in the provinces at least. The necessary funds will be considerable. It is certainly not our Universities that are capable of providing them. The State alone can ensure the life of this enterprise, but its action must be provoked by private initiative.

CHAPTER VI The Framework — Methods — Degrees

THE FRAMEWORK — THE METHODS

A preliminary remark must be made: the system of “Faculties” corresponds to nothing; it is no longer of our time. It needs to be replaced by one of study groups, of “Institutes.” It is absurd, to cite only two examples, that Geography should be cut in two, one part under the title of General Geography in the Faculty of Letters, the other, Physical Geography, in the Faculty of Science. There is no deep reason for placing Political Economy in the Faculty of Law, etc. The whole body of human knowledge can be divided into five great branches: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, and Sociology. Alongside them are the special schools or schools of application, the School of Medicine depending on Biology, the School of Law on Sociology, etc.

At the International Congress of Higher Education in 1900, criticism of the current organization, a genuine legacy of the Middle Ages, began. The idea of a total rearrangement of our educational framework is slowly winning over university circles. Before public opinion, the problem has not even been posed. One must therefore wait, while not losing sight of the fact that the current system is destined to crack.

Our Faculties of Letters prepare students for the Licence and the Agregation. Such is the most serious employment of their time.

Let us set aside the Agregation for now. For thirty years everything has been said about this national scourge, but no one has seriously attempted to remedy it. The Agregation, being a competitive examination preparatory to secondary teaching, had nothing to do, in all justice, with the scientific teaching of a Faculty. This seems to have been understood, and the recent reform entrusts this preparation to the Ecole Normale on the Rue d’Ulm. Our Faculties are therefore going to be relieved of this great worry.

The Licence remains. It alone constitutes the subject of university teaching. One knows, indeed, that for the state doctorate, it is not necessary to have set foot in the Faculty. As for the University doctorate created in recent years, it is sought only by foreigners. Since it confers no advantage, French students absolutely disdain it.

The equivalent of the German and American “doctorate of philosophy” is therefore our Licence. But what an equivalent! In Germany, three years of attendance are required to pass the doctorate, which is the natural culmination of university studies. In the United States, the minimum required is four years. With us, one year suffices, and no attendance is required. One can be licensed at seventeen without having frequented the Faculty except to register. This organization is idiotic, that goes without saying. Thus it is unique in the world; our country has the monopoly.

The first thing to obtain is compulsory attendance. Without this preliminary measure, any attempt to raise up our Faculties of Letters is doomed in advance to sterility.

It is not too demanding to ask for ten to twelve hours per week, half of what is required of a child. The Germans stuff themselves with courses to the point of indigestion. The Americans, to avoid this excess, have imposed a weekly maximum of sixteen hours, a minimum of twelve. These figures seem reasonable.

A minimum age must also be required. One cannot really approach higher education before the age of nineteen or twenty. Students under eighteen should be forbidden from enrolling in the Faculties of Letters: this is the extreme limit.

What should be the duration of studies for the Licence? Two years is insufficient. One must not forget that our students are very young and know virtually nothing upon leaving secondary school. Their instruction must be almost entirely redone in the first year. Three years, as for the law degree, constitute in my opinion the indispensable minimum.

Let us take the history student as an example: the first year would be devoted to reviewing general instruction, to the study of ancient history (the East, Greece, Rome), and to the acquisition of a second language, living or dead. The second year would bear on the Middle Ages and auxiliary sciences (paleography, diplomatics, bibliography, epigraphy). The third year would be devoted to modern times and Geography.

As one can see, even spread over three years, this program would be sufficiently demanding.

I would be in favor, moreover, of allowing the student to pass his examinations in stages at the end of each academic year, and not all at once as is currently practiced. Three years of graduated studies would be less tiring and would yield more genuine benefit than two years of indigestible cramming.

By a very happy inspiration, the minister has just extended to all branches of study the institution of the Certificate of Advanced Studies. Henceforth, no one may present himself for any agregation without possessing this certificate. Our Faculties are charged with preparing for it, and it seems at first glance that we are at last going to possess — after a century of trial and error — the equivalent of the German “philosophical doctorate,” copied by the Americans for thirty years. Well! I have very serious doubts about the effectiveness of this apparently excellent reform. I fear that — in the provinces at least — it will be a fiasco.

The fate of the diploma in historical studies may serve as an example. It has not had great success outside Paris — and always for the same reason: no attendance required. Candidates prepare for the tests in their secondary school, or at home. How can you organize, as in Germany and the United States, in Belgium, etc., seminars of historical, geographical, philological, philosophical studies, etc., with candidates who have the right not to appear at the Faculty until the day of the examination — and who abuse this right?

It is therefore necessary, if one does not wish to suffer great disappointments, to impose regular attendance.

I repeat with deep conviction: the reform will miscarry if the compulsory scientific internship is not instituted.

THE GRADES

These certificates of advanced studies are going to constitute, together with the Licence, the proper task of the Faculties of Letters. The advanced study diplomas therefore appear henceforth as outside the Agregation: they are a prior condition for the Agregation; they are no longer the Agregation itself. From this point, why not say so frankly? These diplomas are the pure and simple continuation of the Licence. Why then not merge the two degrees together?

Through this fusion of three things currently without connection (Licence, Certificate of Advanced Studies, University Doctorate), we would have the equivalent of the German and American doctorate — and even something better.

What will henceforth distinguish the licentiate from the agrege? Two things: 1) the professional and pedagogical internship; 2) the competitive examination on a program that changes every year.

It has been recognized — a century or so after the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples — that teaching is a profession and that it is necessary to learn this profession. Pedagogy is at once science and art. As a science, it is the Psychology of the child and the adolescent. It is an experimental science. It has generated in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States innumerable observations recorded in thousands of books and articles.

The future professor, after acquiring the facts he will have to teach, must therefore learn how to make them penetrate childish or adolescent minds. The principle of the new reform of the Ecole Normale is therefore excellent.

Only a troubling remark imposes itself. If it is excellent that secondary school pupils should have genuine pedagogues for teachers, why should this seem superfluous for pupils of a secondary school? No pedagogical knowledge is, in fact, required of the licensed teacher. There should be in France only one category of secondary establishment, whether it be called lycee or college, as one pleases, it matters little. According to the wealth of localities, the density of population, the lycee or college will be of the first or tenth order; but if there must be differences of degree, there must be none of kind.

Could one not, without abolishing it yet, attenuate the harmfulness of the Agregation? I believe so.

First, give more latitude to the jury. Its conscience is generally admirable. Instead of declaring that ten agrges in history will be admitted this year, do not fix an invariable number but an average. Let the jury fix the definitive number of candidates who deserve to pass.

Let us go further. The title of agrege, or rather of tenured lycee professor (for why keep this old denomination dating from Louis XV?) should be acquired by a dual process: 1) the current competition — with this important innovation: a prohibition against presenting oneself more than twice, to avoid exhausting and sterile overwork; 2) the practice of teaching in a college, or in a second-order lycee, over a certain number of years.

In summary, to cure the present ills, it is necessary: 1) To impose attendance and regular enrollment on those aspiring to the Licence and certificates of advanced studies. 2) To radically separate the advanced study certificates from the Agregation and merge them with the Licence. 3) To suppress the distinction between lycees and colleges and to ensure the personnel of the latter a better situation when they have acquired qualifications.

CHAPTER VII Our Provincial Faculties of Letters — The Student Body

The Faculties of Letters have no students. Such is the phrase one hears repeated whenever reforms are proposed. But it is only a phrase.

Is it true that they have no students? They do not have many, that is certain. But has anyone asked: 1) whether it is possible, or even desirable, that they should have many; 2) whether the small number of “Letters” students is not the rule in every country?

In Germany, the “Philosophische Fakultaten” included, amid the mathematicians, chemists, etc., only a small number of historians, philosophers, and philologists — forty to fifty, no more, and sometimes fewer in the small Universities! And yet the teaching staff was already extremely large, and German Universities were the first in the world.

In Switzerland, where the “Faculty of Philosophy” is divided in two as in France, Fribourg’s History-Philology section counted last year only fifty-one students for twenty-two professors. Similarly in Russia: the historico-philological Faculty of the University of Kazan had fifty-five auditors for twenty-two professors.

We are no worse off than the others, nor even the worst off.

Alongside the “regular” students, one must also count the young secondary school teachers who come on Thursdays to prepare their Agregation; finally, the “correspondents” retained far away who send papers to be corrected.

The artificially thinned-out public of “letters students” does not constitute the sole audience of Faculty professors. The smallest have voluntary students, local scholars wishing to complete their education. The students of normal schools for teachers and schoolmistresses constitute a very interesting public through their intellectual curiosity and attention. Certain public lectures have several hundred auditors. Finally, “university extension” has organized itself nearly everywhere.

As we see, a small Faculty that counts no more than forty or fifty serious and regular letters students in fact possesses in the city a clientele of several hundred people. We will no longer be surprised to see our professors so busy at “small” Faculties of Letters. They often have a great deal to do without anyone suspecting it at first glance.

Let us not be misled by appearances either. One is poorly impressed entering a history seminar, for example, at the sight of the small number of disciples gathered around the professor. In Germany one has seen double, triple the number of auditors and more. But in that country, where as in ours the majority of students are preparing for teaching, secondary school teaching is not specialized as in France. One teaches several subjects at once at the gymnasium. This organization compels the future professors, students of the “Philosophische Fakultat,” to specialize much less at university than their French counterparts. They study a little of everything at once. The result is that a history class packed with auditors in a German University contains only a rather small number of true “historians.” But the foreigner, who does not know this, is astonished, admires, and, back in France, remains confounded by the mediocrity of our student body. He then cries out in his turn: “The Faculties of Letters have no students in France!” But yes they do! They have some after all. Only the student body of the Faculty does not move en bloc from course to course: it splits up, among us, into four or five pieces. And it is so true that the professors of French and Latin have, even in France, an appreciable audience, because their teaching is useful for passing the common portion of the current Licence.

It has less “eye appeal” (forgive the expression) but at bottom it is better, because the German system is not good. Our neighbors will be compelled sooner or later to abandon it.

Let us therefore stop exclaiming about the numerical weakness of our Faculties of Letters, and let our professors themselves dry their tears. Our organization does not allow each of them to have a large audience, and wherever an analogous organization functions, it is the same thing. What we must regret is that harmful regulations, like the competitive entrance examination to the Ecole Normale, precipitate provincials into superior rhetoric classes in Paris, drawing them — almost by force — from the provincial Faculties. And then one reproaches those Faculties for having no students! Let these students be restored to them, and our provincial Faculties of Letters will have as many pupils as our social structure and our population allow.

CHAPTER VIII Are Our French Universities Too Numerous?

One reads in Mr. Simyan’s Report on the Budget of Public Instruction (1904 fiscal year), page 26: “The capital vice of our higher education, let us not be afraid to say so to Parliament, for it is the great culprit, is the too-great number of our Universities.”

With all due respect to Mr. Simyan, in 1896 Parliament showed good sense. The opinion that French Universities are too numerous — I know it: I shared it and, a young whippersnapper, I repeated it around 1892. I had it from my teachers who themselves had it from theirs. It is a historical opinion, an assertion transmitted without discussion, as something self-evident, without reflecting that the conditions that gave rise to it no longer exist today.

At that time, indeed, people began to be struck by the disadvantages of French organization. They dreamed of a resurrection of Higher Education for France. But the idea of reducing the “Academies” to four or five Universities was not provoked in the minds of Cousin and Guizot by the spectacle of German Universities they so rightly admired — for those were numerous, as today. It must have been inspired by practical reasons. Political and intellectual life was dead in the provinces. To believe that one could find there twelve to fifteen towns capable of becoming university centers would have been chimerical. Furthermore, the Parliament of the Louis-Philippe era would never have consented to allocate sufficient funds.

The motives that guided the reformers of 1833 and following years no longer exist today. The French provinces, for the past twenty-five years, have awakened from their three-century torpor. On the other hand, a democratic Parliament generally shows itself better disposed toward the scientific needs of the country than a despotic or oligarchic government. There is therefore no longer any deep reason to reduce to so low a figure the number of our Universities.

Moreover, it is radically false to claim that France cannot have fifteen Universities. Germany has twenty-one for a population one-third larger. The proportion is therefore the same. In the United States, there is no fear at all of multiplying Universities. The State of New York has five, and yet Columbia, in New York, is a colossal organism with six to eight thousand students and eight million in revenue.

Let us stop having our ears beaten with these old sophisms. We certainly do not have too many Universities. Let us dispel this chimera that the suppression of small Universities would benefit the large ones. The Frenchman from the provinces knows only two cities: his hometown and Paris. Since there exist in France no secondary capitals as in Germany, there are no “great” provincial Universities possible. We can maintain medium and small Universities. The social structure of our country forbids us Leipzig and Munich.

Believe that one can create populated centers by the destruction of small Universities is to commit a gross error, to be ignorant of the administrative and social structure of modern France. Suppress the University of Caen: not a single one of its five hundred students will go to Rennes. All will take the road to Paris. Suppress Dijon: how many students will take the road to Lyon? Let us say one-third, to be very generous to the adversary. But the other two-thirds will fall back on Paris — always.

The proximity of Paris is not the true reason for the languor of certain of our provincial Universities. The causes of their malaise are quite different, and I believe I have indicated them.

ADDITIONAL REMARKS

THE ECOLE DES CHARTES

The Ecole des Chartes has evolved, like every living institution. Currently it is the Institute of the History of France. This is something unique in Europe. Let us take care not to damage it by bureaucratizing it. Let us, on the contrary, develop its original character.

It would be wrong to reduce the duration of the Ecole’s teaching. The result would be disastrous. The critical spirit is not acquired by intensive cramming; it germinates slowly. In fact, here is what happens: in the first year the student is merely a schoolboy. The critical spirit awakens only in the course of the second year — not at the beginning, but toward the middle. The student needs an initiation of about fifteen months. It is only around the spring of the second year that those students who will amount to something begin to show, through small pieces of work and certain questions to the professor, that they have a sense of criticism. A third year is not too much to carry out the archival research required by the thesis.

Reduced to two years, the teaching of the Ecole would fall to the level of preparation for a competitive exam. That would be lamentable.

THE LAW DOCTORATE

The law of 1889 had had the result of multiplying candidates for the law doctorate, who were becoming increasingly rare. At the start, law professors, especially the Civilists, groaned. They predicted a lowering of the exam standard and the value of the thesis. The opposite occurred, at least for the thesis. The standard has not ceased to rise. Some professors in Paris, Toulouse, Montpellier, etc., finding themselves at the head of a relatively large audience, have in recent years taken the habit of organizing seminar exercises analogous — all proportions kept — to those of Germany. From these came works of increasing interest, in the form of theses. One saw — incredible thing — students learning a little German and English and making a few research trips. Little by little, our Faculties of Law, until then the shame of French higher education, were emerging from their scientific nothingness.

The new military law is going to annihilate all of this.

LIVING LANGUAGES AND STUDENTS

In the course of their university studies, students forget the little German or English they learned at school. This is unfortunate from every point of view. Our physicians, even professors at medical schools, do not know a word of German. The result is that we are informed of Germanic production, which is immense and generally excellent, with unbelievable delays. Such surgical procedures, such remedies remain unknown in our country while they have spread throughout the entire world two, three, four years earlier and often longer.

It would therefore be highly necessary not only that the living language learned at school continue to be cultivated, but also that a second one be studied in the course of higher education. It is not a matter of learning to speak, which is long and difficult, but simply of learning to read an easy text in each specialty.

ON THE NUMBER OF LETTERS STUDENTS

The latest statistics from the Philosophische Fakultat in Germany indicate a total of 16,000 students. This total encompasses at once what we call Faculty of Letters, Faculty of Science, and, in addition, School of Pharmacy. It is estimated that on average, students of ancient and modern philology, history, and philosophy form 50 percent of the total. In rough terms, we can therefore say that among our neighbors there are currently 7,500 to 8,000 “Letters” students.

In France, the latest statistics show for all students in these Faculties a total of 4,069, one of the highest ever seen. Let us say at once that this figure is misleading. For Paris alone, it must be reduced by 500 units. Persons are counted as students to whom a card has been given allowing them to attend certain closed courses as auditors. These auditors are not included in the German figures. It is therefore necessary, to make the comparison serious, to make a heavy subtraction on the French side.

Even counting only true students, those preparing for the Licence, the Agregation, and the modern language diplomas, the totals are far from being as high as the Administration on the Rue de Grenelle would have us believe. It makes people in the know smile when it announces, for example, 179 students for Caen, 184 for Dijon.

I must have the courage to say it: we do not have 4,000 true letters students, but at most 2,500, more probably about 2,000 — of whom 700 to 800 are in Paris, 1,300 in the provinces. But this, once again, is the fault of the Administration, which has never seriously thought of imposing attendance. The remedy would be easy: it would suffice for the Ministry to show some firmness in promulgating a decree or even a simple ministerial order imposing regular attendance for this state of affairs to change — and very rapidly.

ANNEX — Equipment Budgets of German and French Universities

In the report to the Minister on the state of the University of Paris in 1903-1904, entrusted to Mr. Lippmann, one reads (pages 25-26), among other things: “The subsidy you are able to grant to the University of Paris is insufficient: a single foreign University, twice smaller than Paris, spends more on equipment than the French State for all of its Universities. Too-long programs, too-small a budget: the two facts are connected, for there is incompatibility between the spirit of programs and the development of Higher Education.”

These are severe words that one can only approve. It is good that the authoritative voice of a great scientist should from time to time stigmatize the abject avarice of the French people for everything touching high culture, the blind indifference of Parliament and Ministers.

That said, I must add that the author was mistaken, and very gravely so, when, in support of his “remonstrance,” he cites the example of Berlin, whose Sachliche Ausgaben for scientific institutes amount to 2,097,750 marks — or 2,622,187 francs — while Article 13 of the French Budget Proposal, for the same year, bears only: Universities, Equipment, Paris and provinces: 2,596,505 francs.

Mr. Lippmann should have reflected that, if he were right, France, devoting to all its Universities a sum in equipment inferior to that of a single German University, would have ceased to be a civilized country. This is not the case.

On reading Mr. Lippmann’s report, I immediately suspected an error of method in the interpretation of statistical figures. This error was not long to discover. After corresponding with our German colleagues and examining German budgets, as well as the work of Lexis cited above, and after handling the Minerva with care, I found that the figures concerning the budgets of university institutes include: 1) all resources derived from student fees as well as from State subsidies; 2) not only Equipment (cost of courses, research, laboratory, practical work, collections, heating, lighting, etc.) but also the salaries of non-professorial staff, such as Heads of Works, Curators of Collections, Preparators, Hall Attendants, Concierges, etc. Now these salaries absorb on average 30% in the Institutes that we would call Faculty of Science, 40% and even 50% in the medical Institutes.

In France, by contrast, all salaries are carried under Chapter 10 under the heading of Personnel. To compare like with like, one must therefore: 1) apply to the German budgets a considerable reduction by subtracting all salaries of this “lower” personnel; 2) in France, add to the figures for State contributions the resources derived from practical work fees, etc. It is to this double operation that I applied myself in composing the attached tables.