- The Parcoursup 2020 procedure started at the end of January. Graduates of high school and students in reorientation can formulate wishes of orientation.
- Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, president of the Ethics and Scientific Committee of Parcoursup, an independent body, judges that the platform has made progress in transparency, efficiency and equity.
- However, Parcoursup must in particular further improve its information on the complementary phase and allow vocational and technical baccalaureate holders to find their place in higher education more easily.
Much criticized at its launch in 2018, Parcoursup is less talked about. But that does not mean that the platform has only good points. While her 2020 session started at the end of January, Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, the president of the Parcoursup Ethics and Scientific Committee (independent body of the Ministry of Higher Education) takes stock of the platform's improvements and the challenges that remain still to be noted.
How has Parcoursup improved this year?
Parcoursup has made progress, even if it has not yet reached its cruising speed. The transparency of the procedure has improved considerably. Because previously, the expected were not sufficiently clear. But, this year, they are much better documented. The procedure schedule was also tightened, which allowed Parcoursup to gain in efficiency.
Were there fewer undergraduates and students in reorientation without registration at the start of the 2019 school year than at the start of the 2018 school year?
In total, all phases combined, the percentage of new graduates who left the platform without being "admitted" (with or without a proposal) rose from 23% in 2018 to 16% in 2019. And the end of the procedure, 52,000 additional candidates accepted a training proposal in 2019 compared to 2018. This is positive. In addition, the scholarship quotas among candidates were better respected by the various training courses: in 2018, 51% of training courses had applied a scholarship quota lower than the 5% recommended and in 2019, only 2% of training courses did so .
How can you know if the young people who accepted a registration did not accept it for lack of anything better? Have the default orientations actually decreased?
It is difficult to know, because no qualitative investigation was carried out on the procedure. But 1,534 more new training courses were available on the platform in 2019, thus offering 50,000 additional places. This increase is due, on the one hand to apprenticeship training, and, on the other hand, to the arrival on Parcoursup of new training such as IFSI (nursing training institute) and in EFTS (training institution in social work). This allowed candidates to have more choices and therefore potentially less orientation by default.
Parcoursup was accused of favoring students from inner-city high schools in Paris to the detriment of those in the suburbs in high-tension fields. Is this still the case ?
No, because in 2019, young Ile-de-France residents could not only apply to their academy, but to the entire region. This allowed better mobility of students. And the Parisian universities have less selected the files according to the origin of the school. In addition, Parisian universities have made a big effort to welcome more young scholars.
Did Parcoursup allow students to be more mobile and go to study at a university far from home?
Yes a little more, even if not spectacularly: they were 13,000 more in 2019 (+ 12%) compared to 2018 to accept a proposal in an academy that was not theirs.
Did Parcoursup have a positive impact on the success of first-year students?
It is a little too early to answer this question. We must wait at least another year to assess the percentage of students who have passed their license in three years and compare it to the figure relating to the time of Admission Post-Bac (APB). But university presidents indicate that the dropout rate in the various streams has dropped since the advent of Parcoursup.
Have the “Yes if” courses proven their effectiveness?
Likewise, we still have to wait to see if the system is efficient and if the students are more successful at the end of the license. But we already know that the majority of students who have benefited from a “yes if” procedure and a refresher course have been able to return to the sector they were targeting. With one caveat, however: the support systems for success vary in quality, depending on the university.
But favorable responses to wishes for higher education were sent in error. How to explain such a computer bug? Is it possible that this will happen again?
It's still possible. And a training effort must be made to help universities better configure their waiting lists on Parcoursup.
What lessons could be learned from platforms similar to Parcoursup internationally?
One of our objectives for the year is precisely to look at good practices internationally.
What are the margins of progress for Parcoursup for the next few years?
There is still progress to be made to inform users, because still too many of them do not understand how the complementary procedure works, which aims to offer training to candidates who have not received positive responses in the main phase, or who are not satisfied with the proposals made to them. And We will also have to work on the way in which Parcoursup will adapt to the new bac, the series having disappeared in favor of specialties. How will the expectations of training be redefined and what will be the criteria for examining these files (continuous assessment notes, French bac marks, marks for the March final exams, report cards)? The security of the algorithm must also be reinforced. Finally, vocational and technical baccalauréat holders do not yet seem sufficiently represented in higher education, in particular in BTS and DUT.
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Parcoursup: Top start for the vows season and waiting lists for post-baccalaureate studies
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