Months-Long Strikes Close French Colleges, But Motive Is Unclear

MONTPELLIER, France -- During months of campus protests here, the only serious violence erupted one evening when student activists got in a fight over which movie to show during the all-night occupation of a large classroom.

Police rushed in after one side started shattering windows, student strikers recalled, but the officers were quickly ordered to back off, and the strike went on. And on. For more than three months, Paul-Valery University, the University of Montpellier's liberal arts campus, was paralyzed by an ill-defined movement set off by changes that President Nicolas Sarkozy's government tried to impose on France's long-ailing public university system.

"Block everything," a slogan spray-painted on a classroom wall, became the university fight song. Student protesters, allied with some professors, prevented anyone from entering offices or classrooms, caused classes to be canceled and grades to be withheld, and threatened to stop final exams.

Paul-Valery, with its leafy campus in a suburb of this southern French city, was one of more than 20 universities -- a quarter of the country's university network -- that ground to a halt when the "blockages" began in February, affecting more than 350,000 French students.

The strikes have launched a new round of hand-wringing over France's ancient and tradition-heavy university system. Once a source of national pride, drawing scholars from around the world and making Paris's Latin Quarter a center of intellectual ferment, it has suffered in recent years from inadequate funding, overcrowding and bureaucratic sclerosis.

As a result, French youths in increasing numbers have turned away from public universities, seeking instead to enter private business schools or the government's ultra-select "grandes ecoles" that function as an A-list of higher education in France. Only a third of secondary school students queried in a recent poll said their first choice was to attend a public university.

In the view of many professors and students, the goal of Sarkozy's restructuring was to foster competition among the country's 83 universities, leading to differences in prestige, tuition and financial backing. That challenged the French university tradition, in which fees are uniformly low and diplomas from all public institutions are equally regarded.

Sabrina Reliere, 23, a third-year social studies student at Paul-Valery, predicted that the inevitable consequence of Sarkozy's plans would be a rise in tuition at well-regarded universities and perhaps a tiered system of good and less-good institutions. That would threaten the universities' traditional role as a "social elevator," ushering workers' children into the middle class, pointed out a classmate, Pierre Arnaud.

"They are trying to make the university into a place for the elite, the American way," said Arnaud, 22, the son of a worker from Le Mans.

Reaching into her bag, Reliere pulled out a student card showing that she paid the equivalent of $650 for this year's studies, including comprehensive health insurance. Fearing that competition among universities would bring an end to such a bargain, she said, a majority of Paul-Valery's 15,000 students backed the strike when it began right after winter holidays.

But before long, in the course of endless student assemblies, the strikers slipped toward broader political goals, she said. Non-students and other activists joined, steering student anger toward Sarkozy's business-friendly government, the world financial crisis, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and, one student said, even a debate over the qualifications of Vladimir Putin to be Russia's leader.

"You start with a clear goal," Reliere said, sucking on a cigarette during a break from researching her thesis. "But you end up talking about the war in Israel, swine flu and all the rest. And pretty soon, outsiders come and things harden."