Sorbonne-Paris-Cité slims down for latest Idex bid

The Sorbonne Nouvelle University, known as Paris 3, is set to withdraw from the latest bid made by the Sorbonne-Paris-Cité university partnership to the Idex funding scheme.

Carle Bonafous-Murat, the president of the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, said in an email on 5 September that the partnership’s latest Idex bid was so different from the original project that he was reconsidering the university’s participation. However he reassured senior staff, to whom the email was addressed, that there was no question of the university dropping out of the partnership.

The original Sorbonne-Paris-Cité bid to the Idex scheme involved four universities: Sorbonne Nouvelle University, the Paris Descartes University (Paris 5), the Paris Diderot University (Paris 7) and the Paris 13 University. The bid envisaged a merger between three of the four universities—after Paris 13 university pulled out of the merger talks in December.