- The bac success rate will reach a record this year.
- Universities could find themselves overwhelmed by a very high number of applicants and by more students who want to play extra time in college while the job market improves.
Will we still have to push the walls back? This is the question that university presidents ask themselves. Because Monday evening, they learned that 91.5% of the 740,000 bac candidates had obtained it the first time. And Saturday, those who have passed the remedial oral will know if they have won the famous sesame. This will further increase the cohort of laureates. Compared to last year, the final success rate was 88.1%.
These figures are easily explained: the candidates were assessed continuously this year due to the health crisis. And the baccalaureate juries were benevolent. Certain testimonies also argue that teachers would have reported their students' averages before transmitting them to the grade harmonization juries, in order to ensure that their students were not penalized.
35,000 more graduates could enroll in college
Behind this good news for graduates, there is a real challenge for higher education establishments: making room for all these young graduates. Not everyone will go to university, of course, but there is still the risk of traffic jams at the entrance to universities: "This year there will be around 35,000 additional baccalaureate graduates to integrate into universities", declared this Thursday Gilles Roussel, president of the Conference of university presidents at a press conference. Besides the numbers who will progress in the first year of the license, they will also grow in L2 because there will be less repeaters this year in L1, since the universities have been more lenient in the rating.
And that's not all because the economic crisis is likely to have an impact on the enrollment in universities. "Some young graduates who will find it difficult to integrate into the job market will re-enroll in university," said Gilles Roussel. Suddenly, the universities are already sounding the alarm: “We will be unable to accommodate everyone. We are at the limit of our premises, our teacher-researchers, ”says Gilles Roussel.
The CAES (commissions for access to higher education), responsible for finding an assignment for candidates who have not obtained an admission proposal on Parcoursup, could be more sought after, according to Guillaume Gellé, president of the training and professional integration commission at the CPU: "We can expect that there will be more referrals," he said.
Additional resources requested from the Ministry
At the start of the academic year, the presidents of universities also know that they will have another concern to manage: the reception of neobachelors whose end of school year has been affected by confinement. “We will have to personalize the support of these students much more. By developing remediation systems and tutoring, ”underlines Guillaume Gellé. Which will require additional human resources.
To meet all these challenges, university presidents are calling on the Ministry of Higher Education for more resources: "We assess the envelope that would be between 150 and 300 million euros," says Guillaume Gellé. which demands "an emergency meeting, under the aegis of the Prime Minister". The Ministry of Higher Education wants to be confident and affirms that "each high school student will be called individually". Discussions have started in the academies to increase the offer offered by each establishment (university, STS, etc.).
"The rectorate asked us to create 280 additional places in our supply chains in tension," illustrates for example Nathalie Dompnier, president of the Lumière Lyon-2 university. His university plans to open 100 more. Impossible to go beyond: "We lack premises and teachers," she explains. The ministry has two months left to find solutions.
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