Macron Plans to Close Elite Graduate School
The campus of L’École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) in Strasbourg, France. (Wikimedia)
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on April 8 that he would close L’École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), a highly selective graduate program from which many of France’s leaders, including Macron, graduated. A new school, the Institute of Public Service, will replace the ENA on January 1, 2022.
Former President Charles de Gaulle founded the ENA in 1945 with the goal of equipping France’s best and brightest with the skills for a career in civil service. De Gaulle set up a grueling application system with multiple rounds designed to narrow the pool to only the most qualified. First, prospective students take a year-long course, either through the ENA or through an external institution, to prepare for a written exam. The second round includes a series of oral exams. Those who make it to the third and final round, the grand oral, sit before a jury and answer detailed questions on a variety of topics such as economics and law. In total, just 80 students are admitted to each class. For those who graduate, called énarques, success is all but guaranteed. After completing the program, students choose in the order of their class ranking where they would like to work. The ENA has made four presidents and eight prime ministers
The ENA has always attracted criticism, though it has grown stronger in recent years as many consider the school a symbol of elitism, gatekeeping, and inequity. Indeed, France’s Observatory of Inequalities found that students whose parents work in high-earning professional occupations are 12 times more likely to attend the ENA. In the most recent graduating class, only one percent of graduates came from a working-class family.
Macron first proposed closing the ENA in 2018 as gilet jaunes protests rocked the country. Though the movement began in response to rising gas prices, it soon started protesting general inequality while demanding, sometimes violently, for Macron’s resignation. In his announcement of the ENA’s closure, Macron said, “We cannot accept the idea that when one comes from working-class backgrounds, the ability to... climb the social ladder is... reduced.” He added, “If we accept this… then we accept being complicit in a system that has become more unequal.”
Some doubt that dissolving the ENA will have an impact. Peter Gumbel, a British academic who wrote a book on France’s higher education system, tweeted, “Closing [the] ENA will only be a first step if Macron is serious about tackling the narrow elitism of the French system.” Annabelle Alouch, a sociologist at the University of Picardie, told France 24 that Macron is “looking in the wrong place. Universities are the real engines of social mobility—not the elite schools and, least of all, the ENA.”
Macron faces a tough re-election bid for 2022, as he currently polls at only 24 percent, two points behind Marine Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National. The decision to close the ENA alone will likely not sway the election.