French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin presided over the inauguration last week of the Paris School of Economics, a new institution that its founders hope will eventually rival economics powerhouses like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The new institution was formed through the collaboration of six existing French universities and research institutions, including the prestigious École Normale Supérieure and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, or National Center for Scientific Research. All six partner institutions are public, but the new institution will be run by a newly created private foundation.
The school's semiprivate status is such a rarity in France that a special government decree was required to create the foundation to run it. The status will give the new institution more flexibility in hiring and firing, admissions, and day-to-day operations. Almost all French universities are public and therefore subject to the same regulations that govern other public-sector institutions. That model "makes it very cumbersome and gives universities a very low margin of maneuver," said Claudia Senik, a professor of economics at the Sorbonne who also teaches at the new institution. "It's very difficult to hire people, and is not very efficient."
The new institution already has more than 300 master's and Ph.D. students, as well as some 200 professors and researchers affiliated with it. Organizers expect the Paris School to eventually have nearly 1,000 students and 350 staff members. All current faculty members are affiliated with other institutions, from which they draw their main salary, but that will not necessarily be the case for future hires.
The Paris School's semiprivate status will also free it from some restrictions that public institutions find burdensome. "For example, when you invite a person for a seminar, you don't have to try to find a hotel that is less than 60 euros a night," said Ms. Senik, who is handling media relations for the new institution. At public universities, "there are all these rules that hinder you from doing what you want to do," she said. "It's very, very cumbersome and restrictive." Another thing she said the Paris School will do differently is to help students with career planning. "This task is not defined in a usual university; nobody is in charge of this," she said.
In another departure for a French university, the new institution will prioritize fund raising from the outset. The government has given $26-million to start an endowment, but that capital will remain untouched, Ms. Senik said. Private donors, including the European insurance giant AXA, have also given a total of $5.3-million, and the institution hopes to raise an additional $53-million by 2010. "The idea is to build an important endowment so as to be able to function with the interest and to be sure that we can make long-term offers to people," Ms. Senik said.
Esther C. Duflo is a professor of economics at MIT and a director of the Poverty Action Lab she helped establish there. A native of France, she is on sabbatical and is spending six months teaching at the Paris School of Economics, where she is working on establishing a second Poverty Action Lab.
"It's a pretty unique place, compared to the usual French tradition," she said. "They get to select students, and they have very good students."
The partnerships with highly regarded existing institutions give the Paris School a competitive advantage, Ms. Duflo said. "It is not something which was created out of nowhere. A lot of faculty were already on the site, and there is already a lot of energy, a lot of possibility, to do research."
Government approval of the Paris School's public-private status came just in December, but the institution itself has been in the planning for two decades.
Its founders and government backers clearly hope that the new institution will improve France's global competitiveness in economics. If the new formula proves a success, it could inspire other institutions to seek semiprivate status.
"I hope that this is going to change things not only for us but for universities and research in France," said Ms. Senik. "Whether and how fast they will do it, I don't know."