Education in France is definitely different from education in the US and Russian
Understanding the "Grandes Ecoles"...
France has a dual university system : the "Universités" and the "Grandes Ecoles". Grandes Ecoles have no equivalent in the USA.
After High School, some students (among the best) apply to be admitted to a "Classe Préparatoire": these classes prepare students (in two or three years) for a very competitive admission test to Ecoles d'Ingénieurs (Sciences), to Business Schools or to a few other kinds of schools. In these classes, students work like dogs (40 hours courses a week + constant tests + personal work, no week-end, etc..) to be admitted to the best possible school.
The most prestigious Grandes Ecoles are Ecole Polytechnique (called "X"), Ecole Normale Supérieure ("Normale Sup") and Ecole Nationale d'Administration ("ENA", a post-graduate college), whose initial missions are to train respectively military engineers, university professors and high ranking state officials. They are followed by Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC), Ecole des Mines, Ecole Centrale, Institut d'Etudes Politiques, etc...
France is practically run by people who graduated from X or ENA (sometimes both) : the President of France (until 2007), and the Prime Minister, most of the cabinet members, most CEO of major companies (more than 30 out of the 40 companies of CAC-40, the index of the Paris Stock Exchange).
In France, most of the leading positions are occupied by people with an engineering degree, very often civil servants or former civil servants, members of a "Grand Corps" !
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DID YOU KNOW THAT....? In France, if someone says he/she is an "ingénieur", it does NOT mean he/she can fix your car. An "ingénieur" is not an "engineer". It means that he/she studied in one of the "Grandes Ecoles" and it is quite prestigious. If it's one of the best of these schools, it is very likely that he/she is incapable of fixing your car but that, after having succeeded in a very competitive academic cursus, he/she is a manager in a good-to-high position. The French have very subtle codes to make you figure out which school they went to.
Why a dual system ? France is the only country with such a system for Universities. Why ?
- A " Grande Ecole " was created everytime the need for specialists could not be satisfied by universities
- From the mid-XVIIIth Century : to build harbours and bridges ("Ecole des des Ponts et Chaussées" as early as 1747), to improve artillery ("Ecole Polytechnique"), to exploit mines ("Ecoles des Mines"), to develop industry ("Ecoles Centrales" and "Ecoles des Arts et Métiers"), to train managers ("Ecoles de Commerce"), etc..
- Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, universities created their engineering and their business departments
- The inability of French University to reform is not recent : King François Irst founded the "Collège de France" in 1530 to host disciplines which were rejected by the university. Five centuries later, it is still one of the most prestigious research centers in the country, and it is not an university.
- In a nutshell, today's French system includes three kinds of entities :
- 84 Universities : free, no selection, no money, no connexion with the job market, too crowded, cut off from the real world
- Around 250 Grandes Ecoles : generally free, most very selective, adequately funded, well adapted to the job market, not enough research, too small, forming a new aristocracy
- A handful of large state research organizations (CNRS, INSERM, CEA, etc) : forming joint teams with universities and Grandes Ecoles but often too bureaucratic and too cut off from the economic world
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DID YOU KNOW THAT.....? In France, there is NO selection at all to be admitted to college. Contrary to "grandes écoles" (see above), anybody having passed the "baccalaureat" exam is entitled to be admitted to any university. This is of course absurd and it explains why French universities are over-crowded (at least for the first two years) with a rate of drop-out of 50% or more, the worst being Medical School where only one student out of five passes the first year exam. The project of setting up a selection process for admission to universities is one of these ever-lasting controversial ones the French cherish : the right wing is for it and the left wing strongly against (in the name of equality and democracy). Young students, who are not helped in their orientation, are the primary victims and nothing changes....The President of the university recently mentionned in an article the drop-out rate at the Sorbonne : 73% the first year, 47% the second year, 42% the third year. This is the price of the myth of "No selection".
