The Silicon Valley of Paris

Why do Anglophone countries dominate world university rankings? Several explanations are plausible, namely the dominance of English as the language of academia, but also the high tuition fees which finance universities. However, the French are certain they know why: the rankings, which were originally invented by Americans, simply discriminate against other countries because their universities are smaller and more specialised. Thus, France faces a problem: its university system is strong as a whole, several French schools are world-class in their fields, but it has no counterpart to Oxford or Cambridge. (The mediaeval University of Paris, or the Sorbonne, was divided and legally ceased to exist in 1970 after over eight hundred years of its existence; today’s Sorbonne is only part of it.)

The rankings are influential and universities (unfortunately?) have to adapt. The French solution is prosaic: joining small schools into large universities. One of many places where this is happening is the Saclay Plateau on the southwestern outskirts of Paris. Various universities and research institutes have been moving here from central Paris since the post-war years, but it was only in 2006 that the government adopted a plan to make this the French Silicon Valley. In 2014, the University of Paris-Saclay was created here, specifically to represent France in the first ten positions of worldwide rankings by combining the plateau’s various institutes. In the “Shanghai ranking”, it is already fourteenth in the world; moreover, it is first in mathematics – supposedly surpassing even Cambridge. Major members of the project are the former Université Paris-Sud, which gives Saclay its prestige in mathematics and physics, the business school HEC Paris, the École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, and CentraleSupélec. Countless companies also have offices in Saclay.

As its name suggests, CS itself was also created by a merger of smaller institutions, namely the École Centrale de Paris and the École supérieure d’électricité (abbreviated as Supélec). Supélec has been in Saclay since the 1970s, while Centrale moved there from Paris in 2015. ECP and Supélec’s alumni include Gustave Eiffel, Louis Blériot, and the founders of Michelin, Peugeot, Bouygues, Air France, Schlumberger and Accor. CS is therefore the second most important engineering school in France; the first is the much more famous École polytéchnique, which is also based in Saclay but recently left Université Paris-Saclay.

Saclay is a large area divided into several parts, among them the Moulon Plateau which is home to CS. Moulon is a somewhat remote place a hundred metres above the Yvette valley, through which the railway to Paris runs and where the nearest towns are. Before the universities, all there was here was a farm. This deserted field is to become a university town. Shops, a bank, a primary school, a hotel and restaurants were recently opened or will be soon on the plateau. By 2026, there should even be a metro line to Orly Airport. For now, most of this is only planned, and a few thousand students live in the middle of a building site two kilometres away from the nearest supermarket, post office or railway station. They probably proudly tell people that they study in Paris.