After repeated strikes and blockages from 2005 to 2008, university enrollment declined 14% at Rennes-II and Toulouse Le Mirail, 13.5% at Montpellier-III and 9% at the famous Sorbonne Paris IV, all sites of sustained student agitation.
Meanwhile non-striking universities, business schools, IUT, STS and preparatory schools appear to be holding steady or gaining students. According to Le Figaro, humanities are the hardest hit, in part because graduates can’t get a job and in part because of turmoil year after year.
Parents and students appear to be turning away from dysfunctional faculties to the extent that they can. What does this augur for the future of the humanities, already hard hit by the perverse practice of selecting elites through mathematics (and dumping the weakest in so-called “literature”)?
Bizarrely it is often the same professors who decry the decline of the humanities who support strikes and blockages which make learning impossible.
The cynicism of politically motivated university presidents such as Georges Moliniés at the once proud Paris IV is breathtaking. In striving to embarrass the government, they harm, not just the students (who will migrate elsewhere), but the centuries-old tradition of scholarship in the human sciences.
If government, student activists, university administrators and professors had deliberately conspired to murder the humanities they could not have done a better job.
Donald Morrison’s Time article, The Death of French Culture, provoked intense reaction.
And yet, the systematic putting to death of the humanities in the land of Voltaire and Montaigne by its supposed protectors has gone entirely unreported. Why is that?...
One interesting aspect is how the decision is taken to blockade an institution of higher learning.
Who votes? How? Why is there so much violence? Why do student activists reject votes on the internet, which are both anonymous and closely controlled through the use of student IDs and passwords?
At Lyon II, students voted 59% to 31% AGAINST the blockage, but student organizations rejected the result, demanding physical presence at a General Assembly. Those who have attended General Assemblies know the kind of pressure and intimidation which reign there (rather like teamsters gatherings).
Here are a couple of articles from the excellent rue89 on student “votes”.
Les étudiants de Lyon II votent par Internet contre le blocage
Affrontements entre police, vigiles et étudiants à Lyon 2
