French science policy and the changing role of the university

The role of university research in France is examined in the light of recent science policy shifts and structural changes at both the national and university levels. The efforts of the government to develop a science policy and to make that policy serve social and economic goals have eroded the traditional conception of the individual university scientist autonomously pursuing his own research on funds routinely channeled through the administrative hierarchy. The growth of contractfunding, the proliferation of public sources of financing, the elevation of higher education affairs to ministerial status, the call for universities to devise distinctive research profiles and policies, the shifting, overlapping responsibilities of national agencies and departments, and the general leveling off of public expenditure in R&D -all these are factors contributing to increased tension in the university research community. The interaction of these developments with persistent patterns of behavior and influence of the university scientific community in local and national decision-making has produced a series of contradictions and conflicts in university research policy which recently announced decisions are unlikely to dispel.