France’s booming for-profit education sector ‘lacks oversight’

A boom in for-profit higher education institutions in France has taken place with “little to no oversight”, according to a researcher behind a recent study, which estimates that there are 450,000 students enrolled in the sector – but no one quite knows for sure.

Julien Jacqmin, co-author of a new paper published in the Studies in Higher Education journal, told Times Higher Education that even basic figures – such as what share of France’s students are enrolled in for-profit institutions – were contested among officials. 

“If you follow interviews, discussions, even presentations at parliament, each minister, each senator, each member of parliament, each representative of the sector, are using different numbers,” he said. “Sometimes they say it’s 5 per cent, other times it’s 15 per cent, sometimes even 28 per cent. And you’re like, OK, what is it?” said Jacqmin, who is an associate professor at NEOMA Business School. 

The paper, co-authored by Mathis d’Aquino of the University of Bordeaux, examines the rapid expansion of for-profit higher education in France and argues that the growth has been driven by “apprenticeship funding, permissive regulation and weak oversight”. 

Its estimate of 450,000 students is based on self-reported figures published by the country’s main for-profit providers and places it close to 15 per cent of the higher education population. 

Jacqmin said the rise of the sector was closely linked to France’s 2018 apprenticeship reform, which he described as a policy that primarily operates as a labour market mechanism rather than one focused on education.

“It was initiated by the Ministry of Work, which is separated from the Ministry of Higher Education and their goals are not the same,” he said. “The goal of the Ministry of Work is to have a low level of unemployment. Education in this reform is really a side product.” 

The paper argues that the reform restructured funding flows in a way that made the sector financially attractive to investors, particularly in a permissive regulatory environment with limited barriers to entry.

Asked what he found most striking in the research, Jacqmin pointed to what he called the contrast between the scale of public money flowing through the apprenticeship system and the lack of scrutiny applied to for-profit institutions benefiting from it.

“The amount in this apprenticeship reform, in terms of euros, is pretty much the same as the number of euros put into all higher education and research in France,” he said. “Those are really massive numbers. And in parallel, there is no oversight.” 

The study also points to concerns around aggressive recruitment and weak transparency in the sector, including at times not enough information over programme content, fees and outcomes, as well as the growing role of private equity-backed education groups. 

Jacqmin said one of his worries was the extent to which some institutions appeared to be investing heavily in advertising and communication rather than in teaching or research. “The core objective of the value proposition of higher education is in its name, it’s higher education. It’s not marketing.” 

He also warned that the next phase of the sector’s development could prove difficult, with demographic decline and changes to apprenticeship funding likely to put pressure on providers and potentially trigger campus closures or consolidation, which could impact students.

“There will be schools that will go bankrupt,” he said. “The government has no plans. So my worry is, well, which government will have a plan in the next few years to change that?”

Jacqmin said despite the huge amount of money in for-profit institutions, public universities were facing large budget cuts.

“France is trying to become and to remain a knowledge-based economy. But if it invests badly like this in higher education, we won’t feel it now, but in the next few years we’ll be asking, where is growth, where is social development? And the answer will be, we made mistakes in the past, and we were too slow to react.”

seher.asaf@timeshighereducation.com