Students revolt

last updated 8 January 2015

Paris

Students and professors at more than a dozen French universities went on strike this week to protest the imposition of a Europe-wide degree-granting program. All European universities will soon have equivalent degrees, so that a master’s earned in one country will be roughly equivalent to a master’s earned in another. The students said the reform was part of an “ultracapitalist” conspiracy to privatize French universities. A pan-European system, the students said, would encourage universities to compete for the best students, leading to the “commercialization” of higher education.