With a new corps of graduating seniors being turned loose upon the world, and the University thinking in increasingly international terms, it seemed a good time to ponder the status of higher education in other parts of the globe. After reading a brief item in the English department’s newsletter by Dr. Jean-Michel Rabate, professor of English, we called him up and asked if he’d be willing to talk about the year he spent recently teaching at the University of Dijon and the American University in Paris. What follows is an edited version of that very agreeable conversation.
Gazette: You say that French students have become “tourists in their own country.” In what sense?
JMR: Like a tourist, they are not supposed to be productive. So they are there, trying to be as happy as they can, and still enjoying what makes everyday life agreeable in terms of good food, good wine … It’s this funny veneer of everyday amenities and, deep down, a sort of anxiety for the future, that I think captures the mood. So for me, to be a tourist is to come and not really understand what is really happening but to take a few photographs and then return. That in-between state.
What you would hear among academics in France [is that] all the students are tourists these days: they are not really fundamentally seized by this desire to learn, which I think is so remarkable when you come from Franceat least to Penn. Maybe it’s not the case everywhere; one should not idealize, but this is something I’ve seen with almost all my students here: they’re really addressed personally by the issues we talk about, and they try to get the books, and to read. Whereas the general attitude from the general French student is to try not to be noticed too much, to try to work not too much-just what is necessary, you know, not to take it too seriously, just a little game. It’s not very meaningful there.
Gazette: You’ve said that French universities are “dangerously approaching collapse, if not of a material kind, at least morally,” and that there’s a good deal of defeatism and cynicism among staff and students. Why is that?
JMR: There are two major problems. First is a lack of mobility; basically, the students do not move and the professors do not move. As a professor, it’s very rare to go to another university. This static mobility creates many problemsit’s clear that they’ve been together for too long. They know what the others are going to say, and it’s not very productive. For the students, they tend to return home, at least during the weekend, so they tend to be as little as possible on campus. Which is indeed practicalit’s cheaperbut they will not live the life of students; they rarely go out; they will not see films or exhibitions, and so on. There is a regression, let’s say, to a sort of early adolescence, which is not what I had known as a student.
The other problem is that the number of students has increased staggeringly. For instance, I had come to the University of Dijon in the late seventies, and at that time the university was, I think, 15,000 students. Ten years later it was something like 25,000 students, and now it’s 35,000. They have added a few buildings, but fundamentally, the library is the same, the campus is the same, the bus routes are the same, and so on. So it’s more than doubled in 10 or 15 years.
Gazette: Then why, if it’s an unpromising situation for students, are there so many more of them?
JMR: The reason is purely economical. A university education is free, and unemployment is very high, and the cost of one unemployed man or woman is between twice and three times more than the cost of a student. So for reasons, let’s say, of general politics and statistics, it’s better in a way to have people who would all the same be unemployed to get some kind of learning or competence or skills, when at the same time, nobody wants them really to be on the market.
The Socialist Party in the eighties had what at the time looked like a very utopian program. They said, “We want 80 percent of one generation to have had a thorough education at the graduate level at least. For at least five years after the Baccalaureat” [a national diploma, earned at the end of high school, that allows students to be accepted by universities]. And now it has happened, that 80 percent of French high school students around 18 have the “Bac” and therefore are eligible for universities. It represents huge numbers, but the problem is that they are not really helped. The universities in France are notably understaffednot really so much in terms of professors as in terms of secretaries, administrative personnel. It’s harder to have a new secretary for a department than to hire a new colleague.
Gazette: Were you being flip when you suggested that a second May 1968 is not only possible but desirable?
JMR: I wanted to be a little provocative. I was in Paris during this huge strike in ’95, and the strike was precipitated, not by universities, but it was relayed by a few universities, so somehow everybody is saying “’68 is back.” Having been a student in ’68, I could see both similar factors and huge differences. So it was more like wishful thinking, not because I felt like ’68 was such a great momentit was, after all, based on many delusions and misunderstandingsbut this festive atmosphere, at least, was worth seeing. Whereas when young people would say, “Aha, it is like May ’68,” it was clear that for them, May ’68 was like the First World War. “You speak of anciens combattants.”
I know that in some parts of France it created really very, very difficult conditions, but there was a sort of pleasant break from, let’s say, the grind of everyday life. People would disagree on many things, but you would see everywhere people talkingand I don’t know whether you’ve been to Paris; it is a beautiful city, but it is not particularly, how should I say, the City of Openness.
Historically speaking, things in France have moved through major breaks, upheavals, rather than slow evolutionsmaybe it is the Revolution’s heritage. In all these cases one has the same situation: people may disagree on the solutions, but everybody agrees that there is a problem. And nobody wants to be the first to do the dirty jobwhich is, I guess, something that is very French.
But at the same time I completely doubt that anything like May ’68 could happen again. I think if there is a major crisis, it will not be just France this time, but it will be connected with what the European scheme will provoke in several countries.
