Toulouse: new battle within the university elite around the project of Nobel Prize Jean Tirole
The Toulouse university world is once again in turmoil to obtain a label of excellence. TSE is leaving the ship of a “great university of Toulouse” (Comue) for its own project.
The year 2022 begins in a climate of tension within the Toulouse university world. When the shadow of the Idex label of excellence, lost in 2018 by the universities of Toulouse which had not been able to merge, resurfaces.
The recent announcement by the school founded by the 2014 Nobel Prize winner Jean Tirole, TSE (Toulouse school of economics), to create by 2023 a center of excellence in scientific research called “Toulouse Tech University) (TTU ), with Paul Sabatier University and Isae-Supaero, boosted the competition.
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Joël Echevarria, director at TSE: “Our project is not compatible with that of the university community”
Toulouse 1 Capitole University, Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès University, INP, Insa Toulouse and the Federal University of Midi-Pyrénées, which bring together 31 higher education establishments, are also carrying out a large-scale project which must be tabled, on February 1, on the table for the fourth Investments for the Future Program (PIA4), endowed with 20 billion euros over five years.
Two Toulouse projects?
Problem. That day, TSE and its partners also planned to submit their own project, hoping to obtain a fund of 40 million euros. The schedule is tight and it’s a race to the shallot that has started between the two university camps, not frankly opposed on the benefits of the international influence of a center of excellence, but rather on the question of “the governance”, as noted by the director general of TSE services Joël Echevarria (read below).
Another outstanding question, it is unlikely that the government program PIA4, launched in 2017, will be able to satisfy two Toulouse projects at the same time. Finally, time is running out for the two parties who must find common ground by the end of January.
“Three weeks before the deadline for the call for projects, there is great misunderstanding at the discovery of an isolated initiative, led by the presidency of the University of Toulouse III Paul Sabatier and by the TSE, with the support of Isae-Supaero, aiming to create a Toulouse Tech University. In addition to the brutality of the method and the schedule for its publication, this initiative is problematic on several counts”, wonder in a long press release the presidents Hugues Kenfack (UT1 Capitole), Emanuelle Garnier (UT2 Jean Jaurès), Catherine Xuereb ( Toulouse INP), Bertrand Raquet (Insa Toulouse) and Philippe Raimbault (Federal University).
They and she explain that the project carried by TSE would involve in particular “a dismantling of the Toulouse 1 Capitole university”, of which the school of economics is an integrated part. “TSE cannot self-determine independently of its home university. This scenario is therefore impossible to implement in the state of the law. In addition, this project hijacked, on its own account, the scientific project collectively integrated by all the partner establishments for months[…]»