Abandon university reform, minister urged

A petition calling on France’s newly appointed research minister to discard his predecessor's plans for university reform has received almost 10,000 signatures.

Previous minister Geneviève Fioraso introduced a “law on the freedom and responsibilities of universities”, known as the LRU and aimed at making universities more autonomous by giving them greater responsibility to obtain financing. But research groups have said that it would make the job situation for academics more precarious and would not contribute to a much-needed increase in research funding.

“Some examples gleaned in recent months are enough to measure the disaster that the continuation of the LRU would be,” says the petition text, which is addressed to France’s ministry for education and research, including Benoît Hamon, who became research minister last week. “The financial collapse of universities was previously unthinkable, but now seems almost inevitable.”