An diploma earned every year by the vast majority of candidates, symbol of a republican rite of passage, could soon lose its most obvious function: automatically opening the doors to university. This is at least what a senatorial report published at the start of the school year suggests, and which the Minister of Higher Education, Philippe Baptiste, has chosen not to dismiss with a wave of the hand. On the contrary, he has made it a political totem, promising that the fate of the baccalaureate “must be discussed at the moment of the presidential election.” Quite surprising, given how the bac had up to now seemed immune to the major controversies that regularly stir the French school system.
- A senatorial report proposes allowing universities to select their entrants at admission, rather than through failure during the first year of study.
- Philippe Baptiste rejects a broad-based increase in tuition fees but contemplates state reinvestment or income-adjusted contributions.
- The minister favors creating propedeutic or catch-up years to prepare certain baccalaureates before they begin a bachelor’s degree.
- A senatorial report that hits the bac
- Automatic access to university, the flaw no one saw coming
- Bachelor’s degree in peril: when the diploma no longer guarantees anything
- Tuition fees and scholarships, the financial battle ahead
- Propedeutics and catch-up, the minister’s paths to saving the university
- Bac, money, university: what will really change before the presidential election
A senatorial report that hits the bac
Everything began with a report published on September 9 by a Senate investigative commission devoted to academic excellence, chaired by LR senator Laurence Garnier, close to the presidential candidate Bruno Retailleau. This document, which lists about ten recommendations, does not attack the baccalaureate as an exam per se, but what it automatically enables: access to higher education. A proposal that immediately sparked controversy, to the point that left-wing lawmakers voted against its conclusions.
The next day, on Public Sénat, the minister praised the “quality” of this work, without fully endorsing all of its recommendations. He nonetheless acknowledged that the subject deserved an in-depth debate, describing the bac issue as a “grand societal question” that will have to be resolved during the next presidential election.
Automatic access to university, the flaw no one saw coming
The heart of the senatorial report rests on one simple sentence: rapporteur Laurence Garnier believes that “the French university is selective, but it selects too often a posteriori, and by failure.” In other words, rather than choosing its students upstream, the current system would admit any bac holder, only to eliminate them later, often after an entire year of coursework. The report therefore proposes allowing institutions to choose their own profile and the number of their students.
This prospect deeply unsettles student unions and teacher-researcher unions, who see in it the beginnings of a disguised privatization of public universities. For them, selecting at entry would undermine the principle of equal access to higher education, a historic pillar of the French system.
Bachelor’s degree in peril: when the diploma no longer guarantees anything
Philippe Baptiste bases his argument on a troubling statistical finding. According to him, the rates of continuing studies after the bac are “extremely high,” with students who are not always sufficiently prepared to cope with the pace and demands of higher education. The result: considerable failure rates in the bachelor’s program, i.e., bac+3, a phenomenon particularly pronounced among vocational baccalaureates.
This paradox raises the question: what is the point of a diploma designed to certify the end of secondary studies if it no longer guarantees the ability to succeed in the following steps? It is precisely this flaw that the minister wants to bring to light, insisting on the need to rethink the bac’s role in the face of the increasing diversification of student profiles.
Tuition fees and scholarships, the financial battle ahead
Behind the pedagogical issue also lies a major budgetary challenge. The senatorial report notably proposes to multiply university tuition fees by five for all students, a path that Philippe Baptiste categorically rejects, declaring himself “fiercely” opposed to such a generalized rise.
Facing the real financial pressures on institutions, the minister outlines two alternative scenarios: a massive reinvestment by the State, amounting to several billions of euros per year, or contributions scaled to family incomes. He also reaffirms his commitment to reforming scholarships by eliminating the tiered system, a project estimated at 400 million euros per year and deemed “indispensable” to better support the most modest students.
Propedeutics and catch-up, the minister’s paths to saving the university
Rather than simply closing the doors of the university, Philippe Baptiste favors an intermediate route. He expresses support for creating years of “propedeutic” or catch-up programs, aimed at certain profiles of baccalaureates, to provide them with the necessary foundations before starting a traditional bachelor’s degree. The idea would be to preserve broad access to higher education while offering a preparation stage for those who need it, rather than letting them fail along the way.
Bac, money, university: what will really change before the presidential election
Despite the scale of the debate he is urging, the minister is cautious about the timetable. He himself specifies that most, if not all, of the proposals from the senatorial report will not be implemented in the next six months. He acknowledges that these changes are more a long-term project than an express reform.
What remains is that the sequence marks a symbolic turning point: by openly calling the future of the bac a “grand societal issue,” echoed by several national media at the start of the school year, the minister places the question at the heart of the upcoming presidential debate. A way of signaling that the bac, long considered untouchable, could become one of the most contested dossiers of the next campaign.
Between university selection, the reform of scholarships, and the fear of higher tuition fees, it is not students or examination boards that threaten the bac, but the structural tensions of a higher education system stretched to its limits. One question remains: will the next five-year term dare to finally settle a debate that no one anticipated with such intensity?
