The French pride themselves on Cartesian clarity. They have been trained to turn everyday difficulties into abstract problems, and to seek solutions from the top down, as consequences of general principles, rather from the bottom up, by letting practice speak for itself.

No one would guess this by looking at the French higher education system. It seems a haphazard clutter of programmes and institutions with little common purpose. Professional programmes - those which purport to train students in aspects of business life ranging from industry (engineers, technicians) to services (banking, commerce, management) - are the worst. A number of institutions compete in that particular market. Universities, which depend on the ministry for higher education, and where tuition is basically free; engineering schools and business schools, some of which are public and free (in some cases, students even get paid), others privately owned (usually by semi-public institutions, like chambers of commerce) and charging tuition fees; IUTs (Instituts Universitaires de Technologie), which are housed by universities, but are for all practical purposes autonomous; and IUPs (Instituts Universitaires Professionalises), which are trying to establish themselves within universities as valid alternatives to engineering or business schools.

This system is a legacy of earlier times, when there were very few students in the university system, and professional training was of little concern to them. Engineering and business schools were set up outside the system to provide for the growing needs for high-level professionals. The oldest ones, like Ecole Polytechnique, are 200 years old, and new ones spring up regularly. Admission is by competitive examination, and students spend two or three years after the baccalaureate preparing for it in special cramming schools. Engineering or business school itself usually lasts three years, so that students get their degree about five years after leaving high school.

IUTs are much younger; they were set up within the university system 30 years ago, to respond to the need for middle-level professionals and technicians. At that time, the academic community was much less receptive to these ideas than it is now, and the government decided to give the IUTs almost total autonomy within their universities, so that resources and personnel would not be diverted to other, more traditional, aims. Admission is by a selection process right after high school and graduation two years later. IUPs are still younger, since the first ones opened in 1991. Admission is one year after high school, and graduation three years later. They aim to fill the gap between the needs of the economy for high-level professionals and the inefficiencies of engineering and business schools, the model here being the German Fachhochschulen.

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IUT graduates, instead of going out on the job market, as they are supposed to do, have developed a strategy of re-entering the university system and going for a higher degree. An IUT degree is seen as an insurance, in case they should fail to succeed in their pursuit. Users of this strategy have crowded out from the IUT's bona fide students who would aim for the IUT degree for its own sake, so that French industry is simply not getting the graduates at the level that it says it needs.

IUPs have fallen foul of engineering and business schools, who are not pleased at seeing a new competitor in the market. Engineering schools have been particularly irked by the fact that IUP graduates are called ingenieur matre, which is seen as much too close to ingenieur diplome, the coveted title which engineering schools deliver.

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The IUPs are a way for French universities to break into the world of industry and business. It is clearly the way of the future. There are now more than 1.4 million students in French universities, and it is clear that some kind of correlation must be developed between what they are taught and what the job market requires if economic efficiency is to be achieved, or simply social unrest avoided. Purely academic concerns in university education are no longer enough.

Proof that times had changed was that it was not felt necessary to protect the IUPs by awarding them the same autonomy as the IUTs. Their huge success was further proof; in three years 123 IUPs were created, half from scratch and half by transforming existing programmes. Clearly French universities were rising to the challenge. Then came the March 1993 election. On his arrival the new minister for higher education and research, Francois Fillon, announced a review of existing professional programmes. It turned out to be a hornets' nest which should have been left alone. The minister would have been better advised to leave universities and employers to sort things out for themselves, rather than stepping in and trying to impose uniform rules.

Early in 1994 the administration had issued a decree allowing employers to hire IUT graduates at half-salary, under the guise of prolonged internships. It was supposed to help employment, but the immediate effect was to send tens of thousands of students on to the streets. The decree was withdrawn, but deep wounds remained within the IUTs, which felt that at one stroke of the pen the government had devalued their degrees. True to form, early in 1995 the administration issued a decree reforming the IUTs and IUPs. The IUT students read that the pursuit of studies after an IUT degree would be allowed only in exceptional cases, and took to the streets again. Prime Minister Balladur immediately stated that the decree would be withdrawn; the minister, Mr Fillon, said that it was all a clerical error by the chief civil servant in the ministry, Jean-Pierre Bardet (I am not joking), and the decree was withdrawn. It is supposed to be republished in the coming weeks, with, of course, suitable modifications.

Everyone agrees that IUT graduates should look for jobs and not use their expensive training as a stepping stone to the already cluttered higher levels. The IUPs are an elegant way of solving the problem but the administration went out of its way to create trouble by trying to impose general rules instead of letting such matters be solved locally. Universities which have both IUTs and IUPs, and the industries and businesses which participate, have every interest in keeping them separate, and can be relied upon to find effective means to do so.

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The administration also went out of its way to harm the IUPs. It struck out the provision of a second compulsory foreign language and the rule that half of all teaching should be done by professionals, cut the length of internships and set all supervisory boards under the authority of central administration.

The government will change after the May election, and there will be a new minister for higher education. The Fillon ministry will be remembered for trying to curb the autonomy of universities, and to take decisions back to the central administration where they do not always belong. In France we know this penchant as jacobinisme, from the extreme left, led by Robespierre, during the French Revolution. It is strange to think that the socialists in power, with Lionel Jospin as minister of education, should have shown themselves less jacobin than the supposedly liberal right.

Ivar Ekeland is former president of the University of Paris-Dauphine.