France's student protests widen to the Parcoursup admissions portal

The government's first answer and the students' newest target sit in different ministries ^[19]. The emergency plan came from the minister of national education ^[3]. Parcoursup is run by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation ^[6]. That ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider ^[8]. Substitute teachers are a lever the education minister holds directly. Course by course, the weight given to grades, teacher assessments and personal statements varies, students told Business Insider ^[21].

The two complaints meet in the academic record. Pierre Sourzat is 17, studies in a preparatory program in Toulouse and is president of the association Les Lycéens ^[9]. He said the portal is useful as one place to find and apply for courses, but that it makes students compete on records built in unequal schools ^[17]. "We don't choose our high schools. We go to the one in the area where we live," he said. "And then, when we apply through Parcoursup, we're treated as though we're all equal." ^[10] He said he went roughly a third of a school year without a French teacher at a rural high school north of Toulouse before sitting the French baccalaureate exam ^[11]. That score in part decides which programs a student can reach ^[11].

Ministers have a defence ready. The government says Parcoursup is not a black-box algorithm deciding students' futures ^[20], and on procedure the claim is defensible ^[7]. The protesters are arguing about outcomes. Researchers at Insee and the Paris School of Economics reported in a 2021 study that where demand for a popular course outstripped its places, Parcoursup let programs give academic records greater weight ^[12]. Around Paris, students with strong records had better odds of getting into the most competitive courses, and applicants with weaker records were more often sent to other programs ^[13].

Staffing is one input among several. Ryad Rani, 19, said he missed more than three months of his final year after his mother died in January and he faced eviction from social housing ^[15]. "You're burying your mother and filling in your choices," he said ^[18]. Ilies Djaouti, a 24-year-old master's student at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, said a shortage of local courses can push students to leave home, and that he could move to Paris only because of CROUS, the public student-support network ^[16].

The trade-off the government has chosen is speed over scope. Business Insider's account of the plan describes the mobilization of substitute teachers and does not mention any change to Parcoursup ^[3]. Mobilizing substitutes can be done inside the education ministry ^[19]. Changing how oversubscribed courses weigh records would bring in the ministry that runs the portal ^[6]. In my view the admissions complaint will outlast the staffing fix. "There is no social justice," Sourzat said. "That's why high-school students are angry today." ^[9]