With the opening of the Parcoursup platform this Wednesday, December 18, future baccalaureate graduates will be able to look at the 24,000 post-baccalaureate training courses offered there. A number that makes you dizzy? However, these training courses available on Parcoursup, whether provided by public or private establishments, are only part of the 55,000 training courses and 8,000 establishments registered in the National Directory of Professional Certifications.
If the vast majority of Parcoursup’s proposals benefit from recognition of their diplomas by the State, thousands of other proposals are on the market, without having any recognition or equivalence of diploma, nor guarantee of employment opportunities. professionals. Furthermore, recognized Patrick Hetzel, Minister of Higher Education, last November 6 before the Senate, there does not exist today a “ legal tool which allows us to exclude from Parcoursup certain training courses whose quality we believe is not up to par ».
Quality of training, composition of the teaching staff, existence of a campus
Presenting his roadmap on November 19, the same minister hit the nail on the head: “ There is an emergency to do the cleaning » in this jungle of private higher education. To do this, Patrick Hetzel announced the upcoming establishment of a “ training quality label common to all ministries “. This project, already announced by her predecessor at the ministry, Sylvie Retailleau, should be operational at the start of the 2026 school year.
Applied jointly with the Ministry of Labor, since many private training courses are delivered as apprenticeships, this label will validate a certain number of measures to verify the quality of the training: the composition of the teaching team, the student supervision rate, the existence or not of a campus…
« We still need to secure things from a legal point of view, to ensure that not a single euro of public money goes into training that is not of quality. », further clarified the minister, who intends “ put an end to the abuses of certain actors in the private sector. »
The private sector, whether associative or for-profit, today represents 26.1% of student numbers, compared to “5% 20 years ago », Underlines Patrick Roux, president of the National Federation of Private Education (FNEP). A progression driven mainly by private, for-profit education.
It is therefore to regulate this exponentially growing sector that the Council of State and the General Directorate of Higher Education and Professional Integration are studying the contours of this label, through a working group. The various players in private higher education are being heard at the Council of State until the end of the week on this subject.
“There are private, profit-making structures that do good work”
« We know very well that among private schools, some are not serious, recognizes the president of the FNEP. But there are already a dozen labels. Rather than adding one, with the laudable aim of simplifying things and sorting the wheat from the chaff, shouldn’t we better arrange the existing one, by subjecting it to regular control? »
Indeed, the labels and evaluations are numerous and varied. In addition to national diplomas, issued in the name of a ministry, there are also private training diplomas “approved by the State”. Certain private, non-profit schools benefit from the status of private higher education establishment of general interest. This is the case, among others, of the five Catholic Institutes (Paris, Lille, Angers, Toulouse and Lyon), of the Free Faculty of Philosophy in Paris, and of the Higher School of Journalism in Lille.
« All training already evaluated, which confers a university degree (license, master, doctorate, editor’s note), does not need an additional label », Estimates for his part Philippe Choquet, president of the Federation of higher education establishments of collective interest (Fesic). But, he adds, if “ there are private, profit-making structures that do good work, and if learning is something remarkable “, we also find “ structures which set up, rent an RNCP title (National Directory of Professional Certifications, Editor’s note) and wage an incredible war to seek out students who pay €10,000 per year for training which will be provided exclusively by the companies which will welcome them in alternation. »
« It’s easy to buy twenty computers and say that we are a computer training schooladds another player in the sector. Companies, in need of labor, do not hesitate to take on apprentices. And these schools do not hesitate to ask for a deposit from February, well before future high school graduates obtain the Parcoursup results… »
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