lessons from a very long crisis

After fifteen weeks, the protest movement in higher education is being breathlessness. None of the major players experiencing this conflict can not claim victory. On the contrary, all emerge weakened.
Memory university had not seen it for forty years. The protest movement on campus is now in its sixteenth week. It is apparently on a downslope: Most classes have resumed, the processions are sparse, and the unions' traditional 'calls have reduced their days scrolling to cross. Student organizations are now received by the department. The challenge is far from extinguished: 6 universities are still totally blocked, leaving 60,000 students perspectives examinations, and the lowest still protest calls to extend the arm, bitten by the keen discourse strengthened government . Whatever the outcome of the crisis, and its period, the balance of this movement will be very bright indeed for its players.

Students pay the bill
Students are the big losers in this movement they have not started, not controlled, and in which they have not won much. The second academic semester has been disrupted - to varying degrees - to a fifty campus (over 85). Apart from the 6 facs still blocked, most universities have tried to limit the damage from April through remedial courses (evening, weekend, online ...) and rearranging their year-end exams (new events, calendar ...). décalé But the anxiety still persists among students, especially as the strike has often hit the areas where academic achievement is the most random: early years, social studies ... In the latter disciplines, the picture is mixed. The students, many of which are for the teachers, can boast of having obtained gestures on the reform of teacher training (maintenance of a competitive recruitment and identical bac + 4 in 2010). But the rise of speech against the "privatization" of facs may leave traces in a sequence which is struggling to become more professional and that employers are unfamiliar. The question persists as to the value of diplomas "atypical" of the 2009 vintage.

The government saves appearances
If the government insists that these days "it will not return to the Autonomy Act," is that it would like to forget the concessions made on the major points presented as a few months ago. The decree on the status of faculty, although published in the "OJ", was emptied of its substance at its rewriting, and made some gestures will have a budgetary impact. Those on the mastering will save fewer jobs than expected (8,000 maximum) to the 2010 budget (which could include 18,000 job cuts in education). Moreover, the government promised not to delete posts in 2010 and 2011 in universities. Neither Xavier Darcos Valérie Pécresse or leaves defeated in this battle. In addition to his primary victory in the UMP in the Ile-de-France, Minister of Higher Education has shown a real political clout. However, some within the majority, accuse him of having too watered down his project and, in essence, failing to lead the "major reform" of the universities to which the Government had released so many ways.

Today, it has squandered the strong credit available to it in the academic world. Allowing each other, it acknowledged for the first time Friday that "a heavy boat for reform" had "crystallized the concerns" while maintaining that one could not "wait for reform." One observer notes that it "has lost the monopoly of speech on University Reform." In an article published Friday in Le Monde, thirty scholars, sensitivity of the left have for the first time in years, made proposals to "re-founding the university."

The university can not claim victory
After mobilization of qualified historic bitterness persists among some academics, who feel that they have obtained thin victories. Yet they have succeeded on several topics: the service module can be imposed on them against their will (even though some fear that presidents to do so even when forced), the assessment will be peer reform of teacher training will occur in 2011. But "the way the Government has not allowed trade unions to present them as victories," says the boss of the CPU, Lionel Collet. The university brought the movement started by a rare consensus in the profession, skilled communicators, have toiled fast enough to define strategies. The unions were divided, both in their demands on the modalities of action: the more moderate (CFDT, Unsa ...) rewrote the text but failed to stop the movement and SNESUP inescapable but torn internally has not shown a clear position, leaving the field open to his left, collectives (SLU, SLR ...). Finally, and jeopardize the holding of the examinations by their strikes renewable (not in education, where each day of strike is charged and collected since 2003), faculty have damaged their image among the public.

The presidents must pick up the pieces
Embarrassed, sometimes divided between them, the university presidents have appeared tack during the conflict between the desire to defend the LRU (which gives them more power), the denunciation of the 900 job cuts in 2009 budget, and will to maintain calm within their campuses. For many, this is bittersweet, however: some of the work of reclaiming their image, which had been made in recent years from companies, students and abroad on the merits, is to resume . Especially in the strongholds of the dispute, which may lose staff at the beginning of next.