Why French students want ‘opaque’ admissions platform scrapped

A university admissions platform has emerged as a major source of frustration among the hundreds of thousands of students protesting across France in recent days. Placards calling for the abolishment of Parcoursup – sometimes in very strong language – have become a familiar sight on the streets.

Students have accused the platform, which is similar to the UK’s Ucas system, of operating like a “black box” driven by “opaque” algorithms that reinforce social inequalities and leave young people in the dark about their future. In response to the protests, the French government has pledged to announce proposals to improve the system at the end of October.

Parcoursup, which was introduced in 2018, is used by more than 900,000 students every year to apply for places at public universities, elite institutions such as grandes écoles, apprenticeships and other programmes. Students choose up to 10 courses, and universities rank the applicants based on their own admissions criteria. The previous system was controversial for its use of a lottery to determine who received an offer when universities had more applicants than available places.

One of the central issues with Parcoursup is the lack of transparency around how universities determine who gets an offer, explained Julien Jacqmin, an associate professor at NEOMA Business School whose research has focused on higher education. It is unclear how much weight is placed on various factors such as grades, teacher assessments and personal essays. “We just don’t know how these schools are making their decisions,” he said.

Institutions allegedly use their own “local algorithms” that favour students from secondary schools in more affluent neighbourhoods. “When institutions rank students, they look at where they have been studying,” Jacqmin said. “Imagine, you may be the best at your high school but your high school is not seen as a good one. But we also don’t have an [objective] measure of what is a good or a bad high school. It’s subjective.”

The French university admissions exam, known as the baccalauréat, often takes place after students have already received offers from institutions, which means that universities rely heavily on applicants’ school records in making their admissions decisions. “If a student is from a very good high school in France, they’re likely from a well-off family background, and the training there is going to be better. So if you’re a student at a good school compared to one [student] at a not-so-great one, you have a huge advantage which is independent from your final grades,” Jacqmin added.

Another complaint about Parcoursup is that it is difficult to navigate because of the number of educational tracks on offer compared with Ucas. “Even for me [a higher education researcher], there are many things I don’t understand about it,” Jacqmin said.

Agnès van Zanten, emeritus research professor at Sciences Po’s Centre for Research on Social Inequalities, said three main issues are behind young people’s dissatisfaction: insufficient university places, a complex and poorly understood admissions process and “disguised selection” in public universities.

The admissions portal was initially intended to be used a small group of students looking to enrol in grandes écoles, but it was expanded in 2009 to take in the whole higher education system. Known as the Admission Post-Bac (APB), it was part of a push by the French government to get more students into higher education, comparable to the ambition that Tony Blair declared when he was UK prime minister of having 50 per cent of young people in England enrolled in universities.

“Many young people who did not have plans to enter higher education started making plans, especially students in vocational and technological tracks,” van Zanten said. “But at the same time, the government did not create new places in public universities, nor did they create places in vocational and technological tracks. Students were applying and they were finding closed doors. This has generated a lot of frustration over time.”

Parcoursup, in its present form, allows universities to rank students, place them on waiting lists and make conditional offers even though ordinary undergraduate degree courses are officially non-selective in France.

“Selection has been introduced without the government saying that selection is now allowed in public universities, and many students don’t know how they are selected, so they develop a lot of theories about how they are selected,” van Zanten added.

Those from more privileged backgrounds are better equipped to navigate the incredibly complex platform. “[Wealthier students] get a lot of help from their families. I’ve been interviewing parents, and they spend a lot of time with their children on the platform, going to open days and education fairs to get more information,” van Zanten said. “Sometimes they hire coaches who understand how to game the system.”

Disadvantaged students may become discouraged by long waiting lists and abandon the process. “Part of gaming the platform is that if you’re not a very good student, you should stay until the end – because, the way the system works, you might later get some interesting offers that have been refused by other students,” she said. “Upper-class parents are more strategic. They tell their kids to stay in the system and tell them, “We will find other solutions.’”

Van Zanten said it was difficult to conclude that Parcoursup had increased inequality because it had also encouraged more disadvantaged students to apply to higher education. Nevertheless, university completion and dropout rates showed that it had not resolved existing inequalities, she said.

She called for universities to be required to publish more detailed admissions criteria and annual reports explaining how entrants had been selected. The government should also consider strengthening advantages for scholarship recipients and reviewing geographical preferences to ensure that disadvantaged applicants were not excluded from sought-after courses, she added.

Leïla Frouillou, a senior lecturer at Paris Nanterre University, said students describe the process of being ranked and having to wait months for a decision as an “ordeal”.

“Many people are left without a place by the end of the process. But there are also many applicants who end up accepting an offer that is far from their true preference, for fear of being left with nothing at all. As a result, the proportion of students changing their course of study has risen sharply in recent years,” she said.

The allocation system should be changed, she argued, even though this would not address the shortage of places at public universities. “Some colleagues are proposing the creation of a preparatory year following the [national admissions exams], which would give students time to specialise. But this, too, requires resources.”

seher.asaf@timeshighereducation.com