On the morning of March 12th, 2014, Professor Jean Dorey, former president of Polytechnic University Lyon, France and expert approved byState Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs brought to IICE his lecture titled “French Elite Education” in Room 723, Yingdong Building. The presentation was moderated and translated by Dr. LIU Min, and many doctoral and Master’s students at IICE attended the lecture.
Prof. Dorey first introduced the French education system, he pointed out that the education in France is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 16, which aimed to develop the students’ mastery of the core knowledge and skills, mainly including the ability to read, write and calculate, knowledge of cultivated citizens and culture. Students will be separated after graduating from the secondary school: 77.7% of them will attend common senior high school and they can only receive higher education after passing the graduation exams at their third grade. Secondly, he mainly introduced the French Elite Education. He pointed that French higher education is special in that it pursues a dual personnel training system which differs the European systems or even the systems in the world. The system consists of two entirely different consistent sub-systems：grands école and universités. He concentrated on introducing the history of the grands écoles’ development, types, educational objectives, enrollment and admission, the situation after graduation and the controversy of the French elite education in France. Prof. Dorey concludes that the dual system of the higher education in France will be lasted but the two sub-systems are moving closer to each other and that the latest French revolution of higher education in 2013 emphasized the regional link between grands écoles and universités so as to share their resources.
After the lecture, Prof. Dorey discussed the issues on higher education with the participants. The lecture was enriching, entertaining, and much appreciated by the students present and it ended in a success. 