French Bureaucracy Stymies Studies

Translated by Nina Fink, Morgane Taquet Publié le
French Bureaucracy Stymies Studies
Campus France - Shangai // ©  Sylvie Lecherbonnier
For foreigners studying in France, obtaining a residence permit depends entirely on the goodwill of the police prefecture. The current government is debating a bill that would go a long way toward making life easier for the best and the brightest from abroad.

According to UNESCO, in 2012 France was third on the list of countries that hosted the most foreign students, with a total of 271,000 students and 62,200 student residence permits. This despite the 2011 Guéant memorandum's efforts to limit the number of work permits given to non-E.U. students after graduation. According to Antoine Grassin, Director General of the higher education promotion agency Campus France, the memorandum "had a devastating psychological effect but did not change the numbers."

The measure has since been repealed. A decree passed on August 18, 2014, has also facilitated the permit renewal process for recently hired graduates. However, for William Martinet, President of the French student union UNEF, "the red tape created under Sarkozy has hardly changed." While he agrees the transition from student to salaried employee has improved, he remains critical of "a system where the prefectures control the permits even when universities have given their approval."

Accessibility is another issue. Only 25 prefecture satellite offices exist on French campuses. Martinet explains, "The long lines at the main prefectures will continue to discourage foreign students. It's a battle for them to clear all the housing, enrollment and visa hurdles."

training programs for the prefectures

Mexican PhD student Nadia Cordero laments, "Some prefectures don't apply the 2014 decree. One of them rejected all the renewal applications from Algerian academics in 2014. Maybe they need time to adopt the decree or maybe they just don't want to follow the law." To remedy this problem, the French Minister of the Interior and Campus France have designed training programs for the prefectures.

Multi-year permits are one way to spare Masters and PhD students the pain of the renewal process. They rose from 5,700 in 2012 to 14,000 in 2013. A 2013 memorandum encourages prefectures to make them easier to obtain and if the new bill is passed, multi-year permits will become the rule and not the exception.

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Translated by Nina Fink, Morgane Taquet | Publié le