about the French higher education system

[xiggi]

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One of the things I like about the grandes ecoles is that it is 100% meritocracy. None of this child-of-a-multimillionaire-guaranteed-a-spot-at-Harvard thing you see here.

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<p>Nobody would be more surprised by that comment than people from Lille to Marseilles! </p>

<p>As the article quoted above correctly underscores</p>

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The result, critics say, is a self-perpetuating elite of the wealthy and white, who provide their own children the social skills, financial support and cultural knowledge to pass the entrance exams, known as the concours, which are normally taken after an extra two years of intensive study in expensive preparatory schools after high school. </p>

<p>But the schools fear that the government will undermine excellence in the name of social engineering and say the process has to begin further down the educational ladder.

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<p>Of course, Michael Young, the British sociologist who wrote the 1958 satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy, might be smiling.</p>

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I have been sadly disappointed by my 1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy. I coined a word which has gone into general circulation, especially in the United States … </p>

<p>The book was a satire meant to be a warning (which needless to say has not been heeded) against what might happen to Britain between 1958 and the imagined final revolt against the meritocracy in 2033.

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