The Board of Directors authorizes the President to apply to leave the Experimental Public Institution. Interview with President Alain Fuchs

PSL: On October 7, 2021, the Board of Directors of Université PSL authorized you to initiate the application procedure to leave the Experimental Public Institution category. Can you tell us about the conditions involved?

Alain Fuchs: The administrators authorized me to request that PSL leave its trial status, by transitioning from an Experimental Public Institution to a Great Institution (grand établissement in French). The outcome of the vote was clear: 29 in favor, 3 against and one abstention.
This request is made based on the existing status. Therefore, it will not affect the status of PSL and its schools. In concrete terms, one of the specific characteristics of our model is that the Component Schools maintain their legal personality and status. The retention of this legal personality is expressly provided for in Article 20.III of the Order of 2018. This is a crucial point, which we fought for two years to obtain. This retention of status is not only the precondition for integration, but it has also proven to be the best guarantee for our collective work. The report on ten years of common PSL achievements proves this.
In this sense, the Order of 2018 freed us from what was an inextricable situation by resolving the underlying political issue: it allowed for other solutions than that of a merger.

PSL: Why have you requested to become a Great Institution?

Alain Fuchs: PSL is composed of several schools, some of which are in the Great Institution category (Ecole Nationale des Chartes-PSL, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes-PSL, Observatoire de Paris-PSL, Université Paris Dauphine-PSL). The exemptions this category allows for or authorizes are of great importance for them. This is true for engineering schools and écoles normales, for example, in the selection of students, which is also the case for educational programs managed directly by the Experimental Public Institution (EPE), such as the multidisciplinary undergraduate degree. This category can also allow for the introduction of more redistributive tuition fee policies, such as fees on a sliding scale based on the parents’ income, as is the case at Dauphine. We agreed that Université PSL should have the same status as its component schools. This political analysis is coupled with legal considerations along these same lines. When the Université de Lorraine joined a Great Institution in 2011, the university itself became a Public Scientific, Cultural and Professional Institution (EPSCP), established in the form of a Great Institution within the meaning of Article L. 717-1 of the French Education Code.

PSL: The Order of 2018 provides for a trial period that can last up to ten years. Why have you chosen to end this period now?

Alain Fuchs: In just under ten years of existence, PSL has in turn been a Research and Higher Education Center (PRES), a Community of Universities and Institutions (ComUE), and an Experimental Public Institution. All of these designations raised questions among our international colleagues and partners and, in the case of the ComUE, were criticized by the Court of Audit. Each time, we had to rewrite the bylaws. The time has come to close this institutional chapter in order to focus on our core missions: research, education, and the outreach and transfer of knowledge.
The PSL bylaws are the result of a lengthy period of collective work by elected representatives from various boards of directors of PSL schools and the PSL ComUE, the heads of the institutions and the supervising authorities. They were approved either unanimously or by large majorities by all the competent authorities for the schools in 2019. They were even applied in advance of the agreement with the supervisory authorities. We now have sufficient feedback on them to allow us to make this request.
More generally, why wait when we are ready? Our model is clear from an international perspective, it is shared by the communities, and it works. Unless we were determined to challenge the very process of Initiatives for Excellence while awaiting a new law, it would not make sense to prolong the trial period any longer. Before the Order of 2018, PSL had to constantly adapt to a legal context that was not conducive to its model. Now that this context has finally adapted to our model, we are not going to wait.

PSL: What are the different steps involved?

Alain Fuchs: The process takes place in five steps. In the first phase, the Board of Directors authorizes its president to apply to the supervisory authority with a request to leave the Experimental Public Institution (EPE) status. This authority then judges whether it is appropriate to request an assessment from the Higher Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (Hcéres). If this independent administrative authority is consulted, it will have six months from the time the institution submits the request to issue its assessment. Once this assessment is received, the Experimental Public Institution may either ask its supervisory authority to maintain its request to leave the category or decide to remain in trial phase. In the end, the State can either maintain the statutes, which is the equivalent of exiting the trial phase, request that the trial phase be continued, or end the trial phase, which would be tantamount to returning to the ComUE format. This point is now starting to be addressed by the various boards of directors for the constituent schools. We will keep the communities informed throughout the steps in this process.