A campus tale in Paris
A management scandal at Sciences-Po could undo its global ambitions
Dec 1st 2012 | PARIS | from the print edition
Flags drooping on the left bankIT IS rare for a tale of academic mismanagement in a small institution to grab national attention. But Sciences-Po is no ordinary university. The four most recent French presidents, including François Hollande, studied there. In the heart of the Parisian left bank, it attracts top-rated students and staff. And it has been without a head since its former director, Richard Descoings, died suddenly in April in a New York hotel room.
Now a report on Sciences-Po by the national auditor that talks of “management failure” and “numerous irregularities” has sparked furious debate. Critics have seized on managerial extravagance. Aggrieved students, whose tuition fees have risen sharply, have denounced excessive pay. Others have called for board resignations. And the higher-education minister, Geneviève Fioraso, has overruled Sciences-Po’s choice of successor—Hervé Crès, its deputy director—and imposed a caretaker.
Sciences-Po is an odd creature. The state finances half its budget, but the school is run by a private foundation and is thus unconstrained by rules about selection, fees and salary caps that bind other public universities. Between 2005 and 2010, the school’s budget jumped by over 60%, the state subsidy rose by a third and Sciences-Po more than doubled its student intake, to 3,500. But, says the auditor, it added too many administrative staff, paid them and faculty members too much (Descoings earned €537,247 or $711,585 in 2010) and also took on “risky debt”. The mismanagement, concedes one professor, was “scandalous”.
Sciences-Po says it will clean things up and improve transparency. But the debate has broadened: should it return to its old role as a public-service feeder for the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), the top civil-service graduate school? Or should Sciences-Po continue with Descoings’s project to turn it into an American-style university that competes globally for students and researchers?
For all his faults, Descoings boldly took on the French establishment. He built exchanges with American universities and lured foreign students to Paris. He recruited students from heavily immigrant banlieues. And he got the school to set up new research centres, such as an economics department. He did all this with a flexibility over recruitment that the French university establishment disliked. “It is very difficult to attract the best and maintain a centre of excellence without this autonomy,” says another faculty member, fretful that it could now be compromised.
The trouble is that in the conservative mind, the saga of Sciences-Po’s mismanagement has undermined its credibility. The old elite may now have a stronger hand against the international-minded inheritors of Descoings. Ms Fioraso wants a new director to be chosen by January. The caretaker who must find one happens to be a former ENA classmate of Mr Hollande’s.
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21567425-management-scandal-sciences-po-could-undo-its-global-ambitions-campus-tale-paris
