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Choose France for your graduate future
Famous for its art and culture, France welcomes more tourists than any other country in the world. France is also one of Europe’s top destinations for international students and hosts the third highest number of international students in the world, with 265,000 in 2006, making up 14 percent of France’s student population.
France is a first-class centre for scientific and technological innovation. It owes this standing to its research capacity and its many achievements in such fields as aerospace, transportation, electronics, telecommunications, chemistry, biotechnology, and health, successes confirmed by the number of French winners of the Fields Medal. The French government supports public institutions of higher education, including the universities, thereby lowering the cost of education to each student by approximately €10,000 per year. Public support keeps tuition levels in France among the lowest in the world, while assuring the quality and integrity of degree programs. What's more, no distinction is made in France between French and foreign students: the entrance requirements and admission fees are the same, and the degrees are identical.
CampusFrance is a new entity created to integrate and extend the missions of Agence EduFrance and two other organizations vital to academic and scientific mobility.
CNOUS and EGIDE, now operating under the CampusFrance umbrella, manage the French government’s scholarship programs as well as the inter-university cooperation programs of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Campusfrance.org and CampusFrance’s local offices are the engines behind the organization’s mission of world-class student services. In CampusFrance offices around the world visitors can speak directly with an education specialist to gather information about study in France or to get advice about their options. Students receive concrete, personalized help in matching their goals to available programs, assembling application materials, and tracking applications through the admission process.
The website www.campusfrance.org is visited 100,000 times each month and provides easy access to all the information students need to prepare for a period of study in France. The information is customized to the requirements—and the language—of students in 20 different countries. CampusFrance’s huge online catalogue contains data on 33,000 different programs offered by some 6,000 French institutions of higher education.
CampusFrance supports the coalescence of networks of institutions that wish to facilitate access to their master-level programs. Dedicated websites for several such networks provide information and advice about network programs; they even allow students to complete a common online application.
Six discipline-specific networks, each made up of a few dozen institutions, invite students to apply to master programs using a web-based application procedure that is quick and interactive. Students complete a single, common application with one deadline, noting their institutional preferences; that file is accessed by all of the network’s institutions as they make admission decisions in communal sessions. Each network’s site features an up-to-date presentation of the education and training system used in the discipline, as well as the degrees offered.
Networks are active in the following disciplines:
Engineering • EduIngénierie : www.nplusi.com
Law • EduDroit : www.edudroit.net
Art • EduArt : www.eduart.fr
Economics and management • EduEcoGestion : www.eduecogestion.net
Humanities • EduHumanités : www.eduhumanites.net
Mathematics • EduMaths : www.edumaths.net
The degrees awarded in the French higher education system are based on the European ladder of bachelor, master, and doctorate.
Degrees are awarded based on the successful completion of a specified number of semesters or years of study, expressed in credits as defined by the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). At the core of the French degree system are a set of “national diplomas” that have the same value regardless of the institution that grants them, thanks to the supervision and support provided by the French government.
France has a variety of higher education institutions offering graduate-level education. 87 public universities are spread throughout the country, from the Sorbonne in Paris (founded in 1179) to the new high-tech campus of Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, and cover the entire range of academic disciplines.
