Tarifele reduse pentru studenti in transportul public, în atentia municipalitatii si a universitatilor
Compania de Transport Public Iasi a luat act de discutiile purtate în spatiul public de catre ieseni cu privire la modul de acordare a titlurilor de calatorie cu pret redus de catre universitatile de stat si municipalitate.
Conducerea CTP Iasi, operator de transport public, explica faptul ca este societate comerciala în scop lucrativ si nu dispune de resurse financiare pentru a acoperi diferenta de 50 la suta din valoarea titlurilor de calatorie acordate studentilor, universitatile si municipalitatea fiind institutiile care acorda aceste facilitati categoriei de utilizatori mentionate.
„De precizat, niciodata, în vacanta studenteasca, nu au fost emise titluri de calatorie cu pret redus cursantilor universitatilor. Toate institutiile de învatamânt superior de stat din Iasi au solicitat, în scris, institutiei noastre, suspendarea aplicarii tarifelor reduse pentru studenti, începând cu datele stabilite de catre acestea ca fiind cele la care se încheie anul universitar. Conducerea CTP Iasi îsi doreste ca aceasta situatie sa capete forma dorita de toate partile implicate, într-un timp cât mai scurt, si este interesata ca municipalitatea si universitatile sa gaseasca cea mai buna solutie împreuna”, a explicat Cristian Stoica, director general CTP Iasi.
Primaria Municipiului Iasi a transmis miercuri, 3 iulie 2019, adrese tuturor universitatilor implicate, prin care le-a invitat sa participe la luarea unei decizii comune cu privire la modul de acordare a acestor facilitati studentilor si în timpul vacantei de vara. „Intentia noastra este ca, împreuna cu universitatile iesene, sa gasim o solutie în conditiile legislatiei în vigoare, astfel încât studentii, masteranzii si doctoranzii sa poata beneficia de aceasta facilitate si pe perioada vacantei. În acest sens, va rog sa ne trimiteti cu celeritate opinia dumneavoastra privind modalitatea concreta prin care putem continua acordarea acestei facilitati„, a precizat primarul Mihai Chirica, în adresele remise universitatilor.
Publicație :Bună Ziua Iași
Cambridge’s one-on-one teaching model is based on exploiting graduates
As lecturers, we’re protesting today to persuade the university to pay its PhD teaching staff proper wages
Recently, I was having coffee with a final year PhD student about to submit his thesis. He was excited because he had just finished giving his first ever lecture. He had finally been able to prove himself and experience what his future job might entail.
Yet when we met later, he seemed downcast about the experience. It had taken him five hours to write his first 45-minute lecture – and several more to prepare the handouts and PowerPoint – but he was just paid for the single hour that he was in the room. Afterwards, students emailed him with follow-up questions, and some asked to meet with him to talk about the content. He obliged all of them, but was not compensated for any of it.
But just being paid at all is a major step forward for graduate students like my friend. He belongs to one of the largest faculties in the humanities at Cambridge, which, up until last year, did not pay grads for any teaching done for the faculty. It was only after a massive union campaign that graduate student teaching for that faculty moved from being considered “training” to paid work. This has exposed a system of exploitation still baked into Cambridge’s model of teaching.
Graduate students are the freelancers of the university system. They are often forced into exploitative teaching arrangements because they need experience to continue as academics. The university classifies this teaching as training even though little (often no) training is provided. Graduate students crave the opportunity to teach and share knowledge with undergraduates. This creates self-exploitation. Their passions and needs are employed against them, and they are denied access to decent wages and working conditions.
As the University and College Union (UCU) anti-casualisation officer at Cambridge, I hear many stories like the one told to me by my friend. Aside from lecturing, most teaching at Cambridge is done through one-on-one supervisions organised through colleges, rather than faculties. It is a major selling point of the university and the competitive advantage it gives students is one of the main reasons why they choose to study here. This system relies on the labour of graduate students to fill the gaps that can’t be met by permanent faculty members.
Graduate students at Cambridge are considered self-employed and so are denied even the right to a contract for the work they do. They have no control over the wages offered to them – as a genuine self-employed contractor would – and many don’t even know what their pay rate should be. Payment varies widely for the same work being done across the university. In recent conversations with the university, Cambridge UCU was told that graduate students should enjoy the flexibility of being self-employed. Yet they are not able to enjoy any sense of genuine negotiation over wages or working conditions.
When asked for comment, a university spokesperson said: “The University of Cambridge has been working constructively with UCU, Unison and Unite to address a number of concerns raised around the use of fixed term and casual contracts. A working group which includes union representatives has met on an almost monthly basis and we believe that we are continuing to make progress.”
Graduate students are theoretically not obligated to teach, but without their work the Cambridge supervision system would collapse. Their desperate need for experience and income means that in reality they try to teach as much as they possibly can, and the university knows and counts on this. Even then, they are not allowed to call themselves workers, but “students”. This devalues their work. They have been denied incremental pay raises, appraisals, mentorship, or even proper training.
Cambridge is today opening its doors to prospective students for open days. I encourage all interested students to come to Cambridge – it’s a wonderful place to learn. But this year, staff will be using these open days to call for transparency. We want students to know about the exploitation behind Cambridge’s unique teaching offer.
Undergraduates invest massive sums of money in paying for their education. They deserve their teaching staff to be valued as workers and given a proper wage.
Publicație : The Guardian
To set ethical standards, Europe needs to lead on innovation
Horizon Europe planners must remember that research into ethics and societal needs will only be effective if Europe has world-leading technological capacity, writes Jan Palmowski
The European Commission wants to allocate €15 billion ( £13.4 billion) from 2021 to 2027 to the digital, industry and space cluster in the second, challenge-led pillar of Horizon Europe, the continent’s next research and innovation framework set to launch in 2021.
It’s a big budget, but it has to support research and innovation in a range of critical areas, including artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, manufacturing technologies and space.
How can we prioritise research in areas that are critical to Europe’s future scientific and industrial competitiveness? It is a crucial question as the commission launches the strategic planning phase for this cluster, which will determine the orientations for Horizon Europe’s work programmes in its first four years.
Europe must choose: where can it set the agenda and be ahead of the game?
Europe’s four main political parties have agreed that we need a human-centric investment in new technologies. And Europe has a unique capacity to help set global standards, but research on ethics, societal needs and new legal frameworks can only be effective if Europe’s technological capacity is world-leading.
Europe must offer new solutions in AI to support healthcare, logistics, and smart industry while ensuring that it is human-centred. And as new materials and products are developed, it is important to ensure that these are welcomed by those for whom they are intended.
While meeting new challenges, Europe’s industry should contribute towards achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including those focusing on environmental sustainability.
If computers use a growing amount of energy (currently at 7 per cent of world energy consumption), research and innovation into advanced computing must ensure that increased capacity is achieved alongside sustainable energy consumption, through improvements in hardware (new materials and circuit designs), operating systems (energy-aware resource management), networking (such as fog computing), and algorithms (for big data classification).
Environmental sustainability must also be a key concern in manufacturing, for example through exploring how additive manufacturing can lead to a reduction in industry components by 50 per cent by 2035, or how intelligent product design can help improve the product life cycle.
Environmental sustainability, a clear priority of the new European Parliament, must also be a dominant concern in space research. We need to address the lack of reliable and up-to-date climatological data in many regions worldwide, in part owing to the decline of expensive ground-based monitoring infrastructure. Investment in space research can help us mitigate the effects of climate change, such as hydrological extremes.
A third strategic goal for research and innovation must be Europe’s sovereignty and the autonomy of its citizens. Here there are a range of concerns. Because rare earth elements and metals, which are essential components in electronic devices, do not originate in Europe, it makes Europe dependent on other parts of the world and vulnerable to the effects of trade wars.
It is critical that we develop alternatives that can be used in products such as permanent magnets and electronic devices. Meanwhile, ensuring the security and privacy of citizens must be paramount in the development of applications based on AI and big data. And we need to ensure that we sustain Europe’s dominance in advanced computing as a leader in developing alternative computing methodologies.
The strategic research priorities for Horizon Europe’s digital, industry and space cluster point to three conclusions for all challenge-driven research in Horizon Europe.
First, research and innovation must be connected to what citizens need, or are willing to accept. Researchers should be allowed to challenge existing expectations because the results of breakthrough research (and innovation) are, by definition, unforeseen. Still, research and innovation will become much more effective, and much less wasteful, if societal questions are integrated into research design and implementation.
The expectations for developing interdisciplinary solutions are higher than ever. This will be a methodological, practical and organisational challenge – in the design of the programme and implementation of the research. Horizon Europe must ensure that it does not compromise the depth of scientific knowledge that it supports, while finding synergies between disciplines to solve problems.
This will strengthen and embolden scientists working in areas such as artificial intelligence, space, manufacturing or advanced materials.
Finally, a central strategic question for the Horizon Europe programme is: what should be funded through the programme? Where is public funding of greatest value?
The answer is clear: public funding must go to research that no private company will fund, but whose results have great potential to address the greatest challenges facing society. Private investors may be reluctant to fund research where the potential for application is still uncertain, including fundamental research into new materials or newer fields such as spintronics and photonics.
Research at the early stage of discovery is precisely where the public funds for Horizon Europe must be invested, to maximise its complementarity with private investment in research and innovation.
Publicație : The Times
Yes, branch campuses are still worth it
Branch campuses and joint degree programmes give students and staff unique opportunities that they wouldn’t otherwise have, says Vincenzo Raimo
It seems apt to be reflecting on the future of international branch campuses and other forms of transnational education (TNE) because recently I was at the University of Reading Malaysia campus, working with staff on plans to refocus our operation there.
It has been a tough few months for my colleagues in Malaysia, pioneers for the University of Reading who have poured passion and enthusiasm into creating the best possible student experience, sometimes in quite difficult circumstances, facing pressures from both the “home” campus and the local environment in which they operate.
And last week I was at the NUIST-Reading Academy, a Sino-UK collaborative institute. The academy is a different kind of branch campus, in which we work in collaboration with our Chinese university partner to offer more than 1,000 students Reading degrees in meteorology, mathematics, chemistry, environmental sciences, economics and law.
After more than 20 years working in international education at the University of Nottingham and now Reading, I remain a committed and passionate advocate for transnational education. Why, you might ask, when others are scratching their heads and wondering if it is really worth it? As UK institutions face an increasingly competitive and uncertain domestic environment, I am asked how we can justify diverting funding to support international operations, particularly in a bricks and mortar development in Malaysia.
First, it is worth establishing the facts. Since creating our subsidiary in Malaysia in 2011 to develop and operate our campus, we have accounted for losses of £27 million up to 2022. That’s almost £3 million a year – less than one per cent of our annual turnover, but still a sizeable sum.
In common with other British universities, we have spent some time reviewing our operation in Malaysia. This has led to a restructuring exercise, the closure of our pharmacy section and the loss of a number of good colleagues. We have revised our growth plans considerably, reduced our physical footprint and our operating costs.
But we are also introducing a new law degree – the first and currently the only foreign university in Malaysia to be given permission to do so.
And we are refocusing the campus on disciplines most in demand by the Malaysian and regional economies, adding professional certifications and work experience placements.
Our model in China is quite different: investment has mostly been in the form of staff time and expertise, travelling to China to teach, training new colleagues and ensuring that the quality of what we offer in China is equivalent to that in the UK.
So far our experiences have been very positive, with our academy students outperforming their fully UK-based classmates when they come to the UK for their final year.
This isn’t to say that operating in China has been easy. Working in partnership means many more meetings and having to make compromises in way you wouldn’t have to when running a campus on your own.
The case for overseas campuses is often expressed in pragmatic terms: establishing a research base, increasing student numbers, creating a recruitment pipeline to the UK, raising international brand awareness and, among the more optimistic, making money.
Like in the late 1990s and 2000s, UK universities today are constrained at home with the diminishing value of domestic tuition fees year-on-year. Unlike the last decade, though, when most UK universities saw international student numbers grow, international recruitment today is much more competitive both at home and overseas, and margins on the activity are increasingly strained by higher marketing costs and increasing agent fees. No matter what happens with the funding recommendations from the Augar review, international student recruitment is increasingly seen as the best route to growth.
As a passionate advocate for TNE, I firmly believe that the benefits extend far beyond whatever additional revenue it might bring. In Reading’s case, our portfolio of campuses in South Africa (the oldest UK branch campus), Malaysia and China and our networks of partnerships across the globe, provide our staff and students with opportunities that just wouldn’t otherwise be available.
Over the past five years, for example, we have tripled the proportion of the UK graduating class who have studied or worked abroad as part of their Reading degree. We have created split-site PhD opportunities, allowing students to spend time working in living laboratories overseas, as well as in the UK. And we have secured funding to support research that wouldn’t have been available to a solely UK-based institution.
Of course, getting TNE right isn’t easy. And we have made mistakes. But learning from those mistakes is crucial to the success of our existing and future international developments.
My lessons are these: success in TNE can come in many different forms. If money is the only thing a university is looking for, it should consider doing something else. Above all, building universities takes years, and it’s vital to take a long-term view.
Publicație : The Times
Scientists quit Nobel-winning project over authorship dispute
Founder of LIGO project reveals some researchers have left over a lack of recognition, exposing wider attribution difficulties for large teams
A dispute over paper authorship has led to scientists quitting the celebrated project that in 2015 successfully detected the existence of gravitational waves, a Nobel prizewinning physicist has revealed.
Rainer Weiss, one of the founders of the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo), whose discovery ended a 100-year hunt for the phenomena long predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, revealed that battles over scientific recognition had caused “a lot of friction” at the project, which involves around 1,000 scientists.
The dispute highlights the complexities of distributing paper authorship in an era of huge scientific endeavours involving massive teams. One paper estimating the size of the Higgs boson released by scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in 2015, for example, had no fewer than 5,154 authors.
Speaking at a conference in Germany on a panel discussion about how to manage such projects, Professor Weiss, awarded the prize in 2017 for his work uncovering gravitational waves, said: “It’s a big problem. How do you get visibility [when working as part of a very big team]?”
Ligo’s rule is that, when scientists publish a paper analysing new data, everyone involved in the wider project – right down to undergraduates and engineers – has to be listed as an author. “That’s how we wind up with these monster lists,” said Professor Weiss, emeritus professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But one sub-group within Ligo which had spent eight years attempting to detect what is called a “continuous wave” from a pulsar was unhappy, because they wanted to be listed as special authors if and when such a signal was detected and reported, he explained.
“That’s caused a lot of friction. And has even caused people in the collaboration to leave the collaboration, because we can’t guarantee that we will change the rules [to allow special recognition],” Professor Weiss told the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, an annual conference bringing together laureates and young scientists.
“We never even had these issues until we finally made a discovery. Then everybody began to think: oh my god, how do I get recognised?,” he added.
Speaking to Times Higher Education, Professor Weiss declined to go into further details about who had left.
But he commented: “What has made the problem is many of these people feel they have not gotten enough recognition by this process.”
“And I happen to agree with them. But was leaving the project the right thing to do? I don’t know that,” he said, adding that they had departed in order to have more freedom to work with the publicly available data.
The panel also heard from Rebecca Meißner, a physicist at the University of Innsbruck, who recalled working on one large-scale project where after one year scientists were put automatically on the author list, and remained there for a year after they left.
This meant that some master’s students did not stay long enough to ever earn authorship, she said.
Having done both her undergraduate and master’s degrees on the project, she was eventually included as an author – but was credited on papers where she only had a “rough idea” of the results, yet left off her actual work when it was published, having departed the project too long previously.
“Paper-wise, I think I can’t show you a paper which is really my main work where I’m still on the author list,” she said, and added that authorship rules for large team projects needed improvement.
Publicație : The Times
Nobelist: work-life balance impossible for scholars in short term
Wolfgang Ketterle says scientists should aim instead for equilibrium in the longer term, and always keep other interests or hobbies
Striking a daily balance between work and life is “impossible” for researchers, a Nobel laureate has argued, and academics should instead “hope that things average out in the longer term”.
Wolfgang Ketterle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who won the physics accolade in 2001, told early career scientists at a conference in Germany that there were times in his life when he had “neglected” his family to do physics.
“But then there were times I neglected physics to take care of my family when my family needed me,” he said.
His advice comes amid growing focus on academics’ sometimes punishing schedules and poor mental health. A Times Higher Education survey last year found that around a quarter of scholars were working 10-hour weekdays, and the majority putting in hours at the weekend.
“Things can balance out in the longer term, but to balance something at a given time is almost impossible, because you may suddenly be close to a discovery and you are so excited and passionate about it you will neglect other things in your life,” Professor Ketterle told the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, an annual get-together where Nobel laureates offer advice to young researchers.
“The message I try to give is don’t get too worried if things are not balanced in your life at this moment. You have time – it’s more the time average that matters than the momentary situation,” he said.
Professor Ketterle, a keen runner, stressed that although science would be “dominant” at some points in life, it should never be “the only thing” researchers do.
While scientists should “work hard,” a seven day a week schedule would only lead to burnout, he warned.
Other Nobel laureates who also spoke on a panel discussion about career planning revealed just how important a supportive partner had been to their success.
William Phillips, a physicist at the United States’ National Institute of Standards and Technology, credited “luck”: his wife had a career that meant “she could go anywhere in the country and get a job, and that made things a lot easier for us”.
“She could decide that we should go here or there with the confidence that she was going to be able to find a job…and you know that’s not the way it is with a physicist, you really don’t have a whole lot of options,” Professor Phillips, who won the prize in 1997, told delegates.
He also revealed that when looking after his two young daughters, he would sometimes leave his lab at around 6pm in the evening, go home to have dinner with his family, read to his children and put them to bed – and then go back to the lab.
Donna Strickland, a professor at the University of Waterloo who won the prize last year, said that she got her first invitation to speak at an international conference while pregnant – but decided to attend nonetheless with her 14-week-old newborn and husband.
“I was having to run out to feed my baby in between the talks and my husband had to keep coming and bringing him back and forth. But it was worthwhile doing,” she told the conference.
Publicație : The Times
Alaska president seeks cuts ‘glide path’, not ‘crash landing’
While fighting huge state funding cut, James Johnsen concedes overcapacity and low interest
State spending on higher education has been in short supply in the US for some time now, but the scale of the cuts proposed to the University of Alaska – 41 per cent in a single year – still provoked shock.
James Johnsen, the system’s president, told Times Higher Education that the $135 million (£107 million) saving was far more than his 16 campuses could absorb. But he conceded that the university was significantly larger than Alaska’s current population justified and that some spending reduction might therefore be warranted.
“I think there’s an argument for a gradual glide path of a several years, something that is manageable by us, as opposed to a crash landing,” Dr Johnsen said.
Dr Johnsen said he and his staff had been offering such ideas to Alaska’s governor, Michael Dunleavy, but had received no response for a month when Mr Dunleavy announced the 41 per cent cut last week.
The stunning magnitude of the funding reduction and the resulting talk of closing multiple campuses in Alaska has alarmed university leaders nationwide.
The Alaska situation, however, is unique in some key aspects that perhaps make the governor’s action less dire – and the overall situation less of a national bellwether – than it might initially seem to some outside the state.
First, Alaska is among a small group of states – including Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas – whose economies and government budgets are highly reliant on revenue from oil and other natural resources whose values can fluctuate wildly.
“We live this,” said Mark Hagerott, chancellor of the North Dakota University System, whose state support was cut by almost 20 per cent in 2017 when oil prices plummeted from almost $100 a barrel to $25.
Second, as Dr Johnsen acknowledged, Alaska might not need as many higher education institutions as it has because it has long had one of the nation’s lowest rates of college attendance.
The Alaska university system simply had too much capacity, Dr Johnsen admitted, and regular and steady annual cuts might be appropriate.
“I don’t have a specific number” to suggest, he said, “but I do think that a $10 million reduction each year, while not comfortable, is something that can be managed.”
That, however, is not an immediate option. The Alaskan legislature was due to meet, with the only alternative being to override the governor’s decision to cut the $135 million taken from the universities.
Such an override would require agreement by 45 members of the 60-seat state legislature. The outcome appeared close, with about five or six of Mr Dunleavy’s fellow Republicans seen as key undecided votes.
If an override is granted, thus restoring amounts originally approved by lawmakers, the university system would lose only $5 million of its current $327 million state appropriation. Considering all sources, including tuition fees, the university system currently spends just short of $900 million a year on its 17,500 students.
Much of the current crisis stems from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which since 1982 has been handing state residents an annual dividend from oil-related revenues. The fund’s per capita payment had been about $2,000 per year, but it shrank in recent years, largely because of declining oil revenues and poor stock investments. Mr Dunleavy won office last year largely on his promise to reverse the shrinking value of payouts and bring them back to about $3,000 a year.
Viewing the situation from North Dakota, Dr Hagerott said he did not want to comment on the wisdom of Alaska paying that money to its residents rather than investing for future generations. But he observed that North Dakota politicians faced similar pressures and had so far resisted.
That, however, remained a real struggle, Dr Hagerott said. North Dakota’s governor and lawmakers are soon to begin discussions on how best to budget for the long term, he said.
“We’re trying to think of our children’s children, and how to have a better life for them, and not current-consumption-oriented,” Dr Hagerott said.
Dr Johnsen said he wished that more Alaskans would study at the university level and expressed hope that companies in the state would make good use of their training if they did.
But, he acknowledged, Alaskans are not doing that, and the university system’s low faculty-to-student ratio – including eight-to-one at the flagship Fairbanks campus – cannot currently be justified.
A place such as Harvard University perhaps can afford that kind of faculty depth, Dr Johnsen said. “But I’m a state university system – that is irresponsible to use public resources in that way,” he said. “I have to be honest.”
Either way, Dr Johnsen was bracing for the loss of top academics. During a recent visit to Washington, he said, he was told by staff at federal grant agencies that they were “getting calls from our faculty for references”.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks, regarded as one of the world’s best small universities, has leading research programmes in areas that include ocean sciences, ecology and engineering.
Fairbanks so far has managed to keep key faculty in those fields, said the university’s provost, Anupma Prakash. “But with a budget cut of this nature, there is anxiety about that critical mass,” she said. “That, at the moment, is up in the air.”
Publicație : The Times
De l’Aide sociale à l’enfance à Sciences Po: le témoignage bouleversant de Théo
Placé dans une famille d’accueil de ses 18 mois à ses 19 ans, Théo a vu dans l’école un moyen de «fuir la prison» dans laquelle il était enfermé. Alors que l’Aide Sociale à l’Enfance est en pleine réforme, Théo revient sur son parcours tourmenté, et le «choc des cultures» à son arrivée à Sciences Po.
Son ascension ne s’est pas faite sans douleur. Si Théo* s’est frayé une place parmi les plus prestigieuses des grandes écoles françaises, intégrant tour à tour SciencesPo et une grande école de commerce (qu’il ne veut pas citer pour rester anonyme), il revient de loin. Placé de ses 18 mois à ses 19 ans dans une famille d’accueil de l’Aide sociale à l’enfance (ASE), il a saisi l’école comme planche de salut, une solution pour «sortir du carcan» dans lequel il se sentait enfermé. Il raconte au Figaro la route qui l’a mené jusqu’aux portes de Sciences Po, ses bonnes surprises, mais aussi les humiliations subies.
«L’école était pour moi le seul endroit où j’étais normal, autre chose qu’un enfant placé»Théo
«Je n’ai pas été placé en raison de carences éducatives, mais pour des raisons sociales: nous étions trois enfants et ma mère ne pouvait pas nous loger. En tant qu’enfant de l’ASE, l’école était pour moi le seul endroit où j’étais normal, autre chose qu’un enfant placé: j’étais aussi un élève, un ami, un petit ami. Paradoxalement, certaines situations scolaires me ramenaient avec violence à ma situation différente des autres jeunes. Quand j’allais aux réunions parents-profs, j’étais accompagné de mes parents d’accueil, de mon éducatrice et de ma psy. Il se trouve que je suis noir. Je voyais que les gens se demandaient: «Pourquoi est-il accompagné de trois femmes, et blanches en plus?» J’ai eu des moments de gêne et de honte incroyables. Le fait d’êre ainsi escorté oblige à livrer des choses très personnelles, à violer une intimité, je l’ai vécu comme une injustice énorme. Je me souviens aussi quand on venait me chercher à la sortie des cours pour aller chez la psychologue, dans une voiture avec le logo de la mairie de Paris. J’étais complètement affiché.
Des profs se permettaient aussi des réflexions du genre: «C’est toujours pareil avec toi, tu ne rends jamais tes papiers à l’heure», alors que je devais les faire passer par plein d’intermédiaires, ou encore «tu bavardes en classe, malgré le rendez-vous avec ta psychologue et ton éducatrice…»
Dès que j’avais des propositions de soirées, il fallait que je demande un paquet d’autorisations, que j’envoie un courrier au directeur de l’établissement, pour qu’il l’envoie à l’inspecteur etc. Pourtant, dans une vie d’ado, une soirée peut se décider à la sortie des cours. Je me souviens de ce réveillon de seconde, où je suis resté tout seul dans ma famille d’accueil, car je n’avais pas pu avoir les papiers à temps. Pour moi, le problème, c’est qu’on ne permet pas aux familles d’accueil d’exercer leur bon sens comme elles l’auraient fait avec leurs propres enfants, on bureaucratise tout.
«Avant, je ne pensais pas aux études mais plutôt à des métiers concrets»Théo, au lycée
Je me suis dit que la seule façon de sortir de ce carcan, était de faire du sport, des études. Ce déclic s’est opéré au lycée. Avant, je ne pensais pas aux études mais plutôt à des métiers concrets: je rêvais de devenir chef cuisinier, maçon ou artisan. Ma sœur m’a parlé de Sciences Po. Les matières assez généralistes me plaisaient, et je me suis donné cet objectif dès la première.
J’ai mis les bouchées doubles. J’ai eu la chance que l’ASE Val-de-Marne me paye une prépa Sciences Po durant les vacances scolaires. Comme être à l’ASE m’empêchait souvent de sortir, j’en profitais pour travailler. Tous les soirs en rentrant de cours, je faisais mon goûter et je révisais.
Je suis entré à SciencesPo par la voie normale. Je trouve que l’épreuve de culture générale est discriminante à un point qu’on n’imagine pas. Si tu n’as pas dans ton entourage des gens qui maîtrisent les codes de la réflexion et une solide culture générale, c’est très dur de s’en sortir. Mes parents ont toujours aimé débattre, ils m’ont heureusement apporté une grande ouverture d’esprit. Et mes grands-parents étaient très cultivés, ils avaient des positions influentes en Afrique centrale. Que ce soient mes parents ou ma famille d’accueil, ils voyaient dans l’institution scolaire le meilleur moyen de s’en sortir, et me poussaient à travailler. Je n’ai donc jamais vécu de distorsion entre mon éducation et l’école. J’ai eu mon bac mention très bien , et à 18 ans je suis allé voir l’inspecteur, qui a décidé de m’octroyer un Contrat Jeune Majeur.
«Ils parlaient de leurs soirées de rallye, et je me disais qu’on vivait sur une autre planète»Théo en arrivant à Sciences Po
En entrant à SciencesPo, le choc a été assez violent. Je suis passé du milieu ouvrier de ma famille d’accueil à un milieu très bourgeois. Les gens parlaient souvent de leur famille, et moi j’inventais les métiers de mes parents: ils étaient architectes, businessmen, avocats… Parfois je me contredisais et les gens de Sciences Po devinaient que je cachais quelque chose. Mes silences et ma façon d’esquiver le sujet faisaient qu’ils évitaient de me poser trop de questions.
Les élèves me reprenaient aussi sur mes fautes de français comme «des fois», et sur mes goûts vestimentaires. Je portaisd des chaussettes blanches, ils m’ont vite fait comprendre que c’était un «fashion faux-pas». Ils parlaient de leurs soirées de rallye, et je me disais qu’on vivait sur une autre planète. J’étais avec des jeunes qui pouvaient parler une demi-heure d’opéra sans se soucier de savoir si cela intéressait vraiment leur interlocuteur.
Je me souviens de la première soirée du week-end d’intégration. Tout le monde dansait sur un son des années 60: ils dansaient le twist. J’ignorais que des personnes de 18 ans connaissaient cette danse. Je regardais tous ces gens de mon âge, bien nés, tout leur allait comme un gant, et je me sentais con. Malgré tout, j’ai adoré mes années à Sciences Po, j’ai beaucoup appris, et je m’y suis fait une vraie place. Depuis, j’ai beaucoup plus confiance en moi.
«Nous avons créé l’association Repairs avec des anciens de l’ASE pour éviter de se retrouver seul après »Théo
Au début de mes études, j’ai beaucoup souffert de ne pas rencontrer un autre jeune ayant vécu la même chose que moi. Il existe des tas de réseaux chez les gens aisés, et il n’y en a pas chez ceux qui en ont le plus besoin. C’est pour cela que j’ai contribué à la création de l’Association Repairs.
Nous avons fondé cette association en 2015 avec des anciens de l’ASE. C’est un réseau bénévole d’entraide pour les anciens de foyers et de familles d’accueil, qui se posent souvent beaucoup de questions existentielles. Elle leur propose des bons plans, leur permet de rencontrer des amis, et organise des récoltes de fonds. Repairs a été sollicitée par plusieurs instances officielles: l’Observatoire départemental de protection de l’enfance ou encore la Commission de sélection des appels à projet, et même le gouvernement pour une concertation sur la protection de l’enfance.
* Le prénom a été changé.
■ Le programme d’Aide sociale à l’enfance pour les jeunes majeurs
Le 7 mai, l’Assemblée nationale a adopté un projet de loi qui devait obliger les régions à prolonger l’accompagnement des jeunes placés, de leurs 18 ans à leurs 21 ans (c’est le Contrat Jeune Majeur). Un amendement a finalement remplacé sa dimension obligatoire par une attribution «si [les jeunes] en font la demande» et ont bénéficié de l’ASE pensant 18 mois au moins dans les deux années passées. Un amendement que Théo n’est pas le seul à déplorer. Plusieurs personnalités politiques issues de l’ASE, ont fait savoir leur inquiétude, comme Lyes Louffok, membre du Conseil national de la protection de l’enfance et auteur de «Dans l’enfer des foyers (Flammarion), ou la députée Perrine Goulet (LREM), rapporteur de la mission parlementaire sur l’aide sociale à l’enfance. D’après l’Insee, 23 % des personnes sans logement sont d’anciens enfants placés, et 35% des 18-24 ans sans abri.
Publicație : Le Figaro
Les plus belles écoles de France: Le Figaro dans les coulisses du Conservatoire
VIDÉO – À l’occasion de l’ouverture du festival d’Avignon, Le Figaro vous propose un reportage en immersion au Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique, à Paris. Construit à la fin du 18ème siècle, le lieu accueille chaque année une trentaine d’élèves après une sélection drastique.
C’est un fabuleux cocon doré, l’une des plus belles salles de théâtres de la ville d’un Paris qui n’en manque pas. Dans le 9 ème arrondissement, le Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique (CNSAD) affiche plus de 200 ans d’histoire et demeure un bijou trop peu connu de l’architecture des 18ème et 19ème siècles. Son théâtre à l’italienne classé monument historique à l’acoustique impeccable, ses salles de classe décaties qui furent les bureaux de chantres de la composition musicale et théâtrale et sa boisée salle Jouvet sont autant de reliques d’un temps où l’on faisait ici de la «déclamation» dans des «salles de menus plaisirs».
Le Figaro est allé visiter cette école hors du temps qui accueille chaque année les trente meilleurs élèves des cours de théâtre de tout le pays, à l’issue d’une sélection parmi près de 1 500 candidats.
La colonnade colorée du rez-de-chaussée, les corbeilles du théâtre à l’italienne, les parquets et les façades de la salle Jouvet… Tout ou presque, ici, est fait de bois. Et pour cause. «Le théâtre du conservatoire a été construit par l’architecte François-Joseph Delanoy dans le but de créer une acoustique parfaite, matérialisée par ces structures en bois, explique Vincent Detraz, le directeur technique du conservatoire. À cette époque, le conservatoire avait été créé comme une «École royale de chant et de déclamation», dédiée avant tout à la musique. L’objectif du bois étant purement acoustique, cette salle est restée l’une des meilleurs de Paris dans ce domaine».
Ces décors ont inspiré les plus grands. Hector Berlioz en personne a composé ici sa «symphonie fantastique», alors qu’il était le bibliothécaire du conservatoire. Aujourd’hui réduite à 400 sièges répartis en un orchestre, une corbeille et trois balcons, la jauge était à l’origine de 800 places, dont la moitié des spectateurs agglutinés debout dans un «poulailler», des places tout en hauteur maintenant recouvertes par des fresques d’angelots… en bois.
PLOUKS!
À 14 heures ce jour-là, les élèves de troisième année prennent possession de ces lieux pour une séance de lecture. Pendant une bonne partie de l’après-midi, ils liront ici le recueil de poèmes Plouk(s), de l’auteur britannique Ian Monk, qu’ils donnaient en représentation au mois de juin, gratuitement. Ici, les élèves de troisième et dernière année ont un programme «essentiellement tourné vers la création, dans le cadre d’ateliers dirigés par des artistes invités ou des professeurs de l’école et réalisés dans le temps et les conditions d’une production professionnelle», selon l’école.
En d’autres termes, ils préparent des représentations tout au long de l’année, qui toutes seront présentées, gratuitement, au grand public et aux professionnels du secteur qui viennent ici dénicher leurs prochaines pépites. Les deux années précédentes se composent d’un entre-lac de «cours hebdomadaires de lecture, diction, interprétation des textes, interprétation au cinéma, pratique de diverses méthodes d’échauffement, danse, chant, masque, clown» pour les premières années… et de «masterclasses» de plusieurs semaines avec des professionnels du métier pour les élèves de deuxième année.
«On a tous pleuré»
Deux étages au-dessus du théâtre, une trentaine d’élèves de première année sont en train de suivre un cours de danse et de déclamation. Contorsionnés et hurlants, ils traversent la longue salle Jouvet qui tenait jadis lieu de bibliothèque comme des spectres, dans le noir. «C’est important pour nous faire prendre conscience de l’importance de notre corps sur scène», explique Bénicia. Elle est arrivée du Congo il y a six ans sans connaître le système français. L’an dernier elle s’est attaquée aux impitoyables trois étapes du concours qui exigent la préparation de quatre scènes, dont une en alexandrins, avant d’obtenir son visa pour le CNSAD. «Je suis arrivée là, ça me dépasse en fait. C’était comme un rêve, que je vis encore sans m’en rendre compte. Je me dis toujours ‘Pu**** je suis au conservatoire supérieur national dramatique de la ville de Paris quoi». La première fois qu’on est allé dans la salle Jouvet, on a tous pleuré dans les coins tellement on était émus d’être là.»
Jin-Xuan, également en première année et qui a commencé le théâtre en 2016 dans un conservatoire municipal parisien, évoque «une expérience très particulière, intense et précieuse» en parlant des concours, mais se réjouit d’être entré dans «la plus grande école française», où «les profs sont tous des maîtres et les possibilités de rencontres avec des artistes nombreuses».
Un déménagement porte de Clichy
Malgré l’émoi qu’il suscite, le conservatoire ne devrait pourtant pas rester en l’état bien longtemps. «Ce lieu est riche d’une histoire, le théâtre à l’italienne est tout à fait splendide, mais il y a tant d’actualité au conservatoire que le lieu est devenu trop petit, ça commence à coincer aux entournures, explique Sandy Ouvrier, professeur de théâtre. Il y a des fantômes magnifiques ici, mais ce qui compte c’est ce qui va advenir.»
Dans le cadre du projet «La Cité du Théâtre», l’école va déménager porte de Clichy, d’ici 2022. Seul le théâtre à l’italienne, en tant que bâtiment historique, restera dédié au CNSAD. Les élèves, anciens élèves et amis du CNSAD ont eu beau envoyer une missive au ministère de la Culture pourconserver l’ensemble de la formation dans leurs lieux historiques, cette requête sera, selon toute vraisemblance, vaine. Malheureusement.
Publicație : Le Figaro