Sophie Orange

Access and retention in French higher education: student drop-out as a form of regulation

Abstract Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory and using Durkheim’s concepts of ‘social fact’ and ‘regulation’, this article examines the place held by public universities within the French higher education (HE) system, breaking with the purely bureaucratic vision prevailing in France today. By setting aside some of the main received ideas about the effects and meanings of student selection and drop-out, the article suggests that public universities play an essential role in regulating the successive flows of first-generation students through French HE. It is precisely because public universities are non-selective that they are able to play this role. Finally, the distribution of HE choices and students’ dropping out are both considered as products of a structural and institutional process of regulation.

Democratization of Postsecondary Education in France: Diverse and Complementary Institutions

French higher education (HE) incorporates a diverse group of institutions with different objectives, characteristics, and organizational structures. Some are selective, while others have open admission; some offer academic programs, while others offer vocational programs; some are public, while others are private; some have low tuition fees, while others have very high ones; some are located on college campuses, while others are located in secondary schools; some employ research professors, others only secondary school teachers.

Les mécomptes du supérieur - « Autres » écoles, « autres » établissements et « autres » formations

Miscalculations of Higher Education - “Other” Schools, “Other” Institutions and “Other” Curriculums - The aim of this article is to analyze the construction by the tools and categories of ministerial statistics of a certain vision of higher education and its transformations, to which sociologists are subjected. The explosion of “other higher education curriculums” since the 1960s seems to compete with the situation of the universities. On one hand, the evolution of the latter category has to do with the improvement and expansion of investigative surveys. On the other, it is the product of the internal redistribution of training previously recorded in other categories. The use generally made of this class (“Other Curriculums”) tends to forget that this is a particularly heterogeneous aggregate including blurred and shifting boundaries, which are less the expression of real developments than the product of symbolic struggles between sectors and efforts to create distinctions.

Novos alunos e apropriações heréticas da Universidade na França

Interessando-nos no ingresso no primeiro ciclo universitario frances de estudantes de primeira geracao (isto e, aqueles cujos pais nao fizeram estudos superiores), originarios dos bacharelados tecnologicos e profissionais dos liceus, desejamos mostrar aqui a pertinencia da analise do “jogo universitario” tal como propuseram Pierre Bourdieu e Jean-Claude Passeron em 1964 em Os herdeiros. Na verdade, as chances de acesso, de permanencia e de sucesso na Universidade nao se reduzem a posse de competencias de ordem unicamente escolar, mas remetem de maneira mais ampla a posse de um capital cultural especifico. Parece assim que o fracasso no primeiro ciclo universitario nao tem bases escolares (dominio dos saberes fundamentais), mas implica igualmente, e por vezes essencialmente, desajustamentos de ordem propriamente social (comportamento inoportuno, atitude deslocada, etc.) que podem provocar humilhacoes diversas e, finalmente, uma estigmatizacao da parte dos atores da orientacao escolar, dos professores e dos outros estudantes. Palavras-chaves: Estudantes; Universidade; Diplomas profissionais; Fracasso; Capital cultural.