By bringing together the great pundits of research, Paris-Saclay University has managed to break into the international charts. Reaching 13th in 2021, it is 16th in the ranking published Monday by the Chinese Shanghai Ranking consultants.
by
On the Orsay campus (Essonne), old “Paris-Sud University” panels remain at the entrance. Defeated buildings from the 1970s border wooded alleys. That of the laboratory of the Institute of Spatial Astrophysics (IAS) disappears in a huge cloud of white smoke. This July morning, the tanks of the nitrogen laboratory, necessary for experiences. It is impressive at first, then it fades. A bit like “Shanghai effect” on Paris-Saclay University.
Just created, the young experimental establishment rose in 2020 in the first fifteen universities in the Shanghai ranking. Victory for France, whose best establishments struggled to appear in the first fifty. So everyone will agree here, half-lamb, mid-las, to agree that the 13 e place global obtained in 2021-and the 16 e Year – offers at least one advantage: visibility.
“It is an international projector. Students from Chile as from China watch these rankings and can decide to come and join us,” agrees Pascal Massart, professor at the Orsay Mathematics Institute and Director of the Jacques Hadamard mathematical foundation. He is a little embarrassed when we talk about the first row in mathematics of the Saclay ensemble, it is “both an honor and a cross,” he says relativizing the importance of the charts: “A scientist must remain modest “Word of mathematician, Jean-Michel Morel, professor at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and researcher at the Borelli Center, abounds:” We have not become better. Simply, before, all these [research] groups n ‘ were not classified. “
Before? Before the creation of Paris-Saclay, this vast regrouping of ex-university Paris-Sud, four grandes écoles-Agroparistech, Centraleupelec, ENS Paris-Saclay, the Optique Institute Graduate School-and seven organizations national research. Enough to highlight no less than ten Fields medals and two Nobel prizes. Behind this sudden breakthrough, there is especially “a well-mounted Lego”, of the own admission of Jean-Michel Morel.
So, if today no one seems to be moved by this ranking, it is the sirens of Shanghai who have fed the ambition of “being among the largest world university institutions”, as the Decree which acts, in its creation, in 2019. Entering the dance of a globalized higher education and ultraconcurrent was a real challenge for a complex, scattered and largely public French system, far from the model of major American universities.
You have 51.87% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.