Question 16235 — businesses

Summary

Ms. Sabine Rubin alerts the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation to the worrying financial situation of universities. It is clear that despite repeated warnings from the parliamentary group La France insoumise during the vote on the two previous PLFs, the academic world is suffering greatly from the austerity policies of successive governments and a gradual disengagement of the State which Today, an already financially drained university world is in serious danger. Thus the University of Lille has had to make drastic cuts in its workforce to compensate for the deficit which is overwhelming it, with around fifty positions frozen for administrative staff and teacher-researchers. The precariousness of the academic world is also explained by this poor financial health. In the absence of sufficient funding by the State, universities prefer to use part-time and contractual workers. For example, a lecturer at the start of his career “costs” around 24,600 euros per year, compared to barely 7,800 for a temporary worker. The causes of this financial strain are multiple. First of all, insufficient investment in view of the foreseeable increase in the number of students, if between 2010 and 2016 the number of students increased by almost 12.7%, the number of teacher-researchers increased by only 0.2%. To this, we must also add the resumption of inflation in 2018 which is inexorably eating into the meager compensation obtained. But it is above all in a structural way that the problem is posed; in 2015 France devoted barely 1.5% of its GDP to higher education and research, compared to 2.3% on average within OECD countries. The Government intends to compensate for this university deficit by increasing tuition fees for non-EU foreigners. However, such a measure is not without posing serious problems with regard to the principle of free access to education which is nevertheless guaranteed by the Constitution, and this at all levels. Such an increase would also be likely to reinforce inequalities between establishments, with certain sectors being more attractive than others for foreigners from outside the EU. Rennes 2, Lyon 2, Aix-Marseille, Paris-Nanterre and Clermont Auvergne have already announced that in the absence of real consultation with the ministry, they would not apply this measure which contravenes the republican concept of higher education. Furthermore, the increase in tuition fees could also lead to an additional disengagement of the State, only too happy to relieve itself of some of its essential obligations and missions. It also opens the door to increased recourse to bank loans on the part of students to finance their studies, with the dramatic consequences that we have already observed in the United States, where student loans exhaust students from the working and middle classes, and fuel a speculative bubble which represents a serious factor of instability. for the country's economy. In view of these numerous elements which alarm about the future of youth, she therefore wishes to know what financing measures will the ministry put in place in order to alleviate the worrying financial situation of universities.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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