http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/world/europe/12france.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
NANTERRE, France rsity of Paris, but no student center, no bookstore,
no student-run newspaper, no freshman orientation, no corporate
recruiting system.
The 480,000-volume central library is open only 10 hours a day, closed
on Sundays and holidays. Only 30 of the library's 100 computers have
Internet access.
The campus cafeterias close after lunch. Professors often do not have
office hours; many have no office. Some classrooms are so overcrowded
that at exam time many students have to find seats elsewhere. By late
afternoon every day the campus is largely empty.
Sandwiched between a prison and an unemployment office just outside
Paris, the university here is neither the best nor the worst place to
study in this fairly wealthy country. Rather, it reflects the crisis
of France's archaic state-owned university system: overcrowded,
underfinanced, disorganized and resistant to the changes demanded by
the outside world.
"In the United States, your university system is one of the drivers of
American prosperity," said Claude Allhgre, a former education minister
who tried without success to reform French universities. "But here, we
simply don't invest enough. Universities are poor. They're not a
priority either for the state or the private sector. If we don't
reverse this trend, we will kill the new generation."
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