Claire, 20, in her student room in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), January 21, 2021 (illustration) -

Jeanne Accorsini / SIPA

  • The gradual return to universities, recently allowed within the limit of 20% of the capacity of higher education institutions, would only experience limited success, according to Frédérique Vidal.

  • "40% of students do not come back face-to-face because [...] the distance education mode is a mode of education that suits them", declared the Minister of Higher Education.

  • If these figures reflect the rate of return of students to university benches, the explanations put forward by Frédérique Vidal are however far from the reality on the ground, the students mainly deploring distance education.

Long called for by professors and students alike, the gradual resumption, since the end of January, of courses in universities rather than at a distance has not met with the expected success.

At least according to a figure put forward on February 12 by Frédérique Vidal.

. @ VidalFrederique "40% of students do not come back face to face, because the distance learning method suits them" #BonjourChez VOUS pic.twitter.com/6rQe9RZ1LH

- Public Senate (@publicsenat) February 12, 2021

"In reality, 40% of students do not come back face to face when they could do so because ultimately the distance learning mode is a mode of education that suits them", thus affirmed the Minister of Higher Education during its visit to Public Senate.

This is not the first time that Frédérique Vidal has advanced this figure, which she had mentioned on January 12 on RTL: “What the polls made by the universities themselves say, it is about 60% of young people who ask to come back in person, 40% who do not wish it.

"

FAKE OFF

"Frédérique Vidal quotes a figure taken from a very small sample within a single university, while we do not know concretely, at the national level, how many students return to face-to-face", deplores Mélanie Luce, president of the 'National Union of Students of France (Unef) with

20 Minutes

.

The only occurrence of the figure advanced by the minister emanates in fact from a recent internal survey of the Paul-Valéry University in Montpellier, relayed in an article in

Le Monde

published in early January, which estimated that "40% [of its students] wish to remain at a distance in the second semester ”.

However, as the establishment has since clarified to our colleagues at LCI, this percentage, established from some 6,000 responses received from nearly 21,000 students, does not constitute a "scientific survey" but is the result of a optional questionnaire aimed at establishing an "order of magnitude".

"Distance education is only suitable for a small part of the students"

Contacted by

20 Minutes

, the Ministry of Higher Education explains "closely monitoring the evolution of the situation in the establishments" and "thus regularly requesting information feedback from the establishments via the rectorships in order to follow the evolution of the situation ”.

“In terms of volume, if the protocol allows 100% of students to return to the scale of the establishment, the return actually measured is of the order of 60% on average,” he says.

Jean-Pascal Simon, general secretary of the teaching union Sup'Recherche - Unsa, qualifies however: “The figures of Frédérique Vidal are probably not far from the truth, with close to 10 points: in Guadeloupe and Martinique, where the courses have taken again, it was found that about 30% of the students did not return.

"

On the other hand, he is much more skeptical of the explanation put forward by the minister: “According to direct feedback from students, the distancing is due to three reasons.

First, there is the fear of the coronavirus.

But also the fact of having had to return his accommodation or his student room, which makes it very difficult for these students to return home to their parents.

Finally, only a small portion of students think that distance education is suitable for them as such.

"

If the Ministry of Higher Education also cites "geographic distance in the event of an apartment returned" and a "fear of the epidemic for people at risk" among the reasons given among students in distancing, it also evokes "The balance found in the management of remote personal work in agreement with the teachers".

A majority feeling of dropping out from a distance

This last argument is however undermined by the survey conducted between December 2020 and February 2021 by the Observatory of digital uses in the teaching activity for training purposes (OUF), a collective founded by Sophie Gebeil, Perrine Martin and Marie-Christine Félix, all three lecturers at Aix-Marseille University.

The 11,500 responses received to their questionnaire, massively relayed by the presidents of the establishment to their students, indeed draw up a whole different vision of distance studies.

"The students do not mention any advantage to remote monitoring, except the fact of being" protected from the virus "or even a saving of time in transport and a financial saving on the price of a rent when they are returned. with their parents, ”says Marie-Christine Félix.

"Only 10% of the students who answered the questionnaire consider that they have learned better at a distance and 64.1% have the feeling of having learned less at a distance", agrees Sophie Gebeil.

Distance education also widens inequalities between students since, as Perrine Martin points out, “55% of non-scholarship holders returned to live with their parents while 60% of scholarship holders remained in university residences.

"

The answers given by the students to the open-ended questions of the survey also clearly underline this general feeling of dropping out: “Usually I need to do very soon after class, but when I leave a class I don't nothing withheld ”,“ we have no social relationship with either the teachers or the students ”,“ the lessons are very complicated to follow, we sometimes do not have the necessary supports to come back to them if we have had difficulties to follow them ”…

“It is misleading to speak of distance education, we should rather speak of" DIY ", in the noble sense of the term.

In the same way, there is a form of misconception to suggest that there is a return of students on campus when they are only offered two half-days of face-to-face lessons in the week, ”deplores Sophie. Gebeil.

And Jean-Pascal Simon concludes: “To say that nearly one in two students is happy with this distance education, as Frédérique Vidal does, is to see the glass very full: when a student registers for the university, it is to study face-to-face, otherwise he would register with the National Center for Distance Learning (CNED).

"

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