France is spending 4.4 billion euros on a new modern university campusdesigned to rival Cambridge and Harvard as one of the world's best. The Paris-Saclay super-campus is France's answer to years of declinein higher education.
"Our goal is to rankamong the top 10 universities in the world," said Herve Le Riche, who heads the project. The new campus will start opening its doors in 2015 as a grouping of 23 universities, colleges and research institutes.
New laboratories, amphitheatres, student housing along with shops and transportwill be built with a view to making France a destinationfor some of the best and brightest who now head to US and British universities.
The ambitiousproject enjoys the backing of one key figure: President Nicolas Sarkozy whose government is digging deep into its pockets to make the dream of a world-class university a reality. Sarkozy got the academicworld talking when he announced that one billion euros of his 35-billion-euro national loan programme would go to Paris-Saclay.
France fares poorly in the world universities ranking compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Only two universities in Europe are among the top 10: Britain's Cambridge and Oxford. Harvard tops the list and eight of the top 10 are in the United States. France has only three universities ranked among the world's top 100.
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