Grandes écoles and the French élite

What is the difference between an université and a grande école like CS? In France, acceptance to any university course is considered the right of every secondary school student, and most universities only require applicants to have passed the French school leaving exams (baccalauréat). Therefore, 95% of students in higher education take this path. However, many go on to fail their first year exams. A bachelor’s degree (licence) is completed in three years; most graduates go on to a master’s degree, which takes a further two years.

Unlike universités, grandes écoles have selective entrance exams. Candidates must spend two years after secondary school on legendarily intensive “preparatory courses” (classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles, commonly called prépa). Teaching at a prépa is more like school than university, and many prépas are also secondary schools. Surprisingly, while university students are called students (étudiants) in French, students at both prépas and grandes écoles are specifically referred to as pupils (élèves). So, if a twenty-one-year-old Frenchman tells you that he is an élève, he could mean that he is still in school after having to repeat some years, or that he got into a grande école.

A student who gets into a grande école usually studies there for three more years and graduates with a master’s degree; if he doesn’t get in, he can complete his studies at an ordinary university. So, in both systems, a master’s degree is awarded after five total years of higher education. The great variety of degrees and schools in France is so confusing even for the French that they use abbreviations such as “Bac+2” (two years after leaving school) or “L3” (the third year of a licence).

Grandes écoles often face criticism for supposedly creating a hereditary élite; despite generous bursaries and only symbolic tuition fees, few of their students come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The main target of these critics is the École Nationale d’Administration in Strasbourg, which has educated future French and European civil servants since 1945. It has educated four French presidents, nine prime ministers, the executives of many major French companies, and foreign politicians (among others, Pavel Fischer, a Czech politician and former ambassador to France). During the yellow vest protests of 2019, President Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker and ENA graduate, promised to close it down; this is apparently not happening.

Another alleged school of the élite is the École polytéchnique, a military engineering school founded in 1794. In French society, there is a perception that an engineer is also a natural manager, general or politician, and many engineering students at grandes écoles are not at all interested in engineering as a career. Therefore, humanities are compulsory at CS, while specialisation in a particular engineering field only takes place in the last year of the course. Furthermore, most CS students come from prépas focused on mathematics and physics, and have no practical experience when they arrive at CS. This is the main difference between French and British engineering education; while many French people only see an engineering degree as evidence for future employers that they are intelligent, British engineering courses are intended for students who actually want to become engineers, and so they immediately launch into practical preparation after (usually) theoretical A-Levels. The result is that French students lack practical skills more often, but, on the other hand, the level of pure mathematics in some modules at CS would reduce many British students to tears.