this project to create a new university that reshuffles the cards
The Director General of Toulouse School of Economy announced Saturday, January 8 the project to create a new university triggered the TSE, the University Paul-Sabatier and the ISAE-SupAéro, “to deal with the announced downgrading of Toulouse”. Project which will undermine that of the regrouping of higher education and research establishments in Toulouse.
It is an announcement which has the effect of an earthquake in the Toulouse university world.
Christian Gollier, Director General of the Toulouse School of Economic (TSE), a school created by the Nobel Prize for Economics Jean Tirole, presented, via his Twitter account, the project to create a new Toulouse university developed by the TSE and Paul-Sabatier University, in partnership with the ISAE-SupAéro school. This regrouping aims to reinstate Toulouse in the international Idex ranking. “Toulouse Tech University aims to join the top-100 of the Shanghai ranking“Writes Christian Gollier in particular.
Asked this Sunday, January 9 by France 3 Occitanie, Christian Gollier confirms that since Thursday evening, “we have a project that we are submitting to the entire Toulouse academic community, which is the creation of a large Toulouse university, which has all the human capital and the reputation to be one of the best universities in the world, with people who share the same scientific and academic values, the same objectives, and the awareness of an extremely competitive international environment“.
Today, it should be understood that Toulouse is declassified, Toulouse is not one of the labeled cities which will become major research universities. The risk is that Toulouse will become a small provincial town in terms of academics and research while it is the second city in France in terms of scientific productivity after Paris.
But the announcement of this creation comes in a particularly sensitive context: a project to bring together higher education and research establishments in Toulouse has indeed been on track for more than a year, in particular supported by the Occitanie region. A merger that takes time, some entities not necessarily being in favor, others opposites opposed.
This counter-project, it seems led by Jean Tirole, the founder of the TSE, would be quite advanced: a meeting at the Ministry of Higher Education would have taken place on this subject Tuesday, January 4.
Voices are already rising to protest against this prospect, between concern not to leave by the wayside of the two other universities, Jean-Jaurès and Capitole, loss of autonomy of schools, political issues, rejection of these international rankings including the merits are widely disputed.
This “turnaround“, as the union Unsa-ITRF.Bi.O of Paul-Sabatier University qualifies, will not lack mistrust and concern within academia.