December 3, 2024 marks an important stage in the mobilization of French universities, which are encountering great difficulties in constructing their 2025 budget. This mobilization, which began on November 21 during a general assembly of France Universités, led a delegation of presidents to obtain an emergency appointment with the Minister of Higher Education and Research. During this interview, the presidents expressed their anger and their incomprehension regarding an ever more constrained 2025 finance bill and precipitating all universities into an extremely serious situation from a point of view. financial view.
Although universities have already contributed to the efforts required by the country's economic situation by incurring massive additional costs linked to salary measures and increases in energy prices, the government persists in imposing on them, without funding, an increase in expenses salaries by raising, among other things, their contribution to the special pension allocation account.
The only response from the ministry is to refer all universities to their cumulative cash flow (€2.5 billion nationwide), which we know full well is not money that is lying dormant. Indeed, the majority of an establishment's cash flow being secured on targeted and contractualized operations, it cannot therefore be redirected towards current expenses such as electricity bills, salaries of university staff and even less pensions.
In the absence of a concrete response to this new impassable march of uncompensated expenses, the universities decided, at the end of the general assembly of France Universités on November 26, to declare the day of December 3 a “university” mobilization day. in danger.”
This day must mark an unprecedented stage of awareness of the reality of the situation of universities which, without response, will be led, for some urgently, to take measures to reduce their activities (reduction of reception capacities at the admission to a bachelor's or master's degree, closure of training courses, closure of university campuses, reduction in the quality of services, freezes of positions, postponement of their investments, failure to recruit doctoral students, etc.).
The France Universités office sent a letter to the Prime Minister to alert him to the critical situation of universities and, even more, to the consequences of this crisis for the future of our youth and our country.
