Sciences Po Paris (École des Sciences Politiques) Plays Favorites

By Krystle Wong

PARIS (Herald de Paris OP ED submission) – It is time to call the bullsh*t at France’s top political school and its increasing parades of hubris. Two days ago, Director of Sciences Po Paris Richard Descoings announced on his blog the campus site of a new delocalised university in Reims, the sixth in a chain of existing delocalised campuses outside the main Paris campus. Specialising in American studies, the Reims campus will be set in an old Jesuit’s College, a grand and magnificent relic dating from the 17^th century, with a green courtyard and wide mahogany hallways. Besides displaying these proud photographs of the future campus, the director pertly stated the ambitious target of 1800 enrolled students after roughly 5 years, beginning with 80 students in the coming academic year of 2010-2011.

While Sciences Po Paris’ lead and ambition in the role of internationalizing the historically elite French institution is admirable, its glaring negligence towards the poor development of the existing delocalised campuses is stoking the anger and dissatisfaction of many students currently studying there. To many, Descoings’ blog post on Reims comes as a slap in the face and a slimy licking of the American boot. Indeed, 1800 students after 5 years indicates a whole lot more investment and effort than what has been given to existing campuses. The Nancy campus to date has only 240 students after 8 years. The Le Havre campus, a little more than 110 students after 3 years. The announcement of the Reims campus and Sciences Po’s further hyping-up of its new Franco-American dream comes at a time when students at the delocalised campuses are already protesting a restriction on borrowing books from the Paris library and are increasingly disillusioned about the grandeur of being a student at Sciences Po Paris, or rather, of not being treated equally as one.

As it is, its campuses in Le Havre (Europe-Asia studies) and Dijon (Eastern European studies) are still struggling with small libraries and a shortage of facilities. The story of Sciences Po Le Havre is particularly blighted with administrative disappointments. Established in 2007, the campus began without its own campus. At its beginning, the Le Havre campus was a corridor in the Centre de Commerce International (CCI). A year later, half its classes moved from the CCI to a smaller number of rooms at the World Trade Centre of Le Havre to accommodate a new intake of students. Students walked back and forth in order to access one library in one of the buildings, and the one and only available student printer there.  Teaching quality in the first semester of the second batch of Le Havre students was poorly coordinated and seemingly unmoderated. Till today, many Le Havre students are still unsure as to how to calculate their average grade, as they have never been informed how to. With the recent hiring of a new Dean of Studies at the campus, the academic condition has improved, but the lack of a campus building to call their own is still an ongoing challenge for the students, a problem now well into its third year and looking to last a few years more. Curricular activities are limited to particular opening hours of the World Trade Centre building, so students often hold their own association meetings in the relatively more comfortable settings of their home studios.

Promises of a new campus building have been made, with the students at a loss for when it will actually be completed (or even started). As the delocalised campuses run undergraduate programmes which last for only 2 years, the prevailing attitude of leaving students at this point in time can be summed up with a resigned shrug. Association leaders who are striving to make the campus better through the organisation of more activities are beginning to fire blanks of desperation at trying to fire up the campus spirit.  Often, students look for ways to escape the city and the campus, seeking reprieve by going home for the weekend or taking a day trip to Paris.

As a student of Le Havre and an active member in one of its main associations, I am angry and disappointed in the release of this new information on Richard Descoings’ blog. In applying for this school, I believed in a fresh and fair education, a faraway ideal from what I was used to in my native country. Upon arriving at Le Havre, I was initially defensive of the school’s controversially small size and the questionable quality of its teaching. As I near the end of my second year, I feel disgust for what appears to me a blatant show of negligence on the part of the key administrative actors at Sciences Po Paris for the delocalised campuses who are still in apparent need of development. A new delocalised campus has sprung up every 2 to 3 years, with still relatively little progress to show for the follow-up and improvement of each.

The new Reims campus smacks of hubris—an overambitious gait to achieve the presently unnecessary and unwarranted. If there are extra funds available, they should not be pumped into the establishment of a new and larger campus, but into the still small, still struggling campuses scattered listlessly around France. These funds should be made available to speed up the process of building a proper campus site for those who need it, to hire better professors, to stock up fledgling libraries and, really, to pay for better quality control over how the campuses are being run.

Beyond the misdirection of financing, it is hardly becoming for the Director of Sciences Po Paris to flaunt the opening of the future campus in Reims in the face of other Sciences Po students who are already feeling like they are getting the short end of the stick. Yes, it is laudable to have yet another member join the growing delocalised Sciences Po family, but not when this new sibling is being presented as the favourite child bedecked in the shine and sparkle the others are missing.

Where is your prudence, Mr. Director Sir? At the risk of sounding anti-pluralistic, we must say that we are very thankful that the world has only a limited number of continental and regional spheres to offer. Who knows, at this rate, how much further the Sciences Po Paris funds will be diluted amongst its newer children at the beset of envious complaints from its neglected.

M. Le Directeur Richard Descoing’s original blog announcement may be found HERE

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