The reality of the level reached by young baccalaureate holders: the challenges of higher education

Created in 1808, the baccalauréat was once a rite of initiation that gave young people their place as adults in society. The diploma prepared them to continue their studies at university or to enter a grande école, the promise of a successful career.

These days, the PISA surveys are piling up and showing declining results in mathematics, reading, science, etc. France is in the middle of the pack among OECD countries. Junior and senior high schools have students study texts that are literary in name only, since they are rewritten to be accessible to as many people as possible, who struggle to read a complex text. The teachers who mark the baccalauréat are asked to re-evaluate their marks - in other words, to raise them.

Once at university, these young graduates are in difficulty, and very often groups of levels or measures to help them need to be organised, which require a rethink of the teaching normally given. In Belgium, for example, where there is no baccalauréat, entry to university is easy, but the constant shortage of secondary school teachers, particularly in mathematics, has meant that these young people have not been able to receive a stable education over the years...

Finally, the university teaching body itself has been undergoing profound change for more than a decade: many of its teachers come from secondary schools, so they work with secondary school methods, even though these methods are constantly showing their limitations. This is undoubtedly a bitter observation, but it has to be made.

Who can still provide higher education today? Who can still provide genuine higher education? Is it a question of the level of students or the training of teachers?

What does the future hold for higher education?