There is an urgent need to reinvent the social contract in higher education

Article published in Challenges on November 10, 2025.

The skyrocketing salaries of the international scientific elite have made the race for excellence extremely costly. The French university model, inherited from a postwar social contract based on free education, academic freedom, and the public service of knowledge, is faltering under the pressure of a globalized world where knowledge has become a commodity.

The 20th century marked the triumph of universities modeled on the Anglo-Saxon system, which demonstrated their ability to create value for society. In just a few decades, universities have seen their responsibilities multiply, shifting from educating a select elite to the mass expansion of higher education accessible to the majority of the population, and contributing to a massive expansion of the frontiers of our knowledge—knowledge that has sparked new industrial revolutions, bringing prosperity and well-being. In the postwar period, a social contract took shape around the academic values of the Enlightenment, the freedom of researchers, the transfer of knowledge, and the role of...

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Useful links:

• Human Capital Center

Illustration: Photo by LexScope on Unsplash.