Grande école

I mean, it was an impossible situation for students and, and, and for, uh, and for faculty.

And as now, as in the issues now- Ah, there wasn't light at the end of the tunnel because compounding the fact that there weren't jobs, unless you were in one of the grandes écoles, that is the big fancy schools, unless you were an ENARC or one of these people in the administration school that was gonna just slide into some party post in a Gaullist government, ah, you know, what was there at the end? And you also had this, this extraordinary ambiguity, ah, you know, in thinking about this or ambivalence, because if you were basically against the sort of technological super-powered society of, of, of, of fast cars, ah, and, uh, the Americanization of, of, uh, European culture, if you believe strongly against that, you know, what kind of job is there gonna be at the end of the tunnel for you? You can't be a professional militant, you know, your entire life.

What are you gonna do? And the people, by the way, who were, who invested their careers or lost their careers in this mobilization, uh, were toast because they refused to sit for their exams, ah, and they committed professional suicide right on stage because they did it.

And it all starts with a lot of them, Daniel, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who was a militant when he was expelled from the University of, of Nanterre, ah, ah, because of, of, of his militancy.

His enemy is the CRS, uh, and the students, uh, you know, who are afraid they're gonna get gunned down by, by the CRS, uh, they, they have things that they're, um, uh, in, they had in, in common.

And, and they're both fighting against the brutaliza-brutalization, as they would have put it, of human relations.

Is that capitalism seemed to be, uh, simply perpetuating this favored society in which the rich do very, very well, thank you very much, and the grandes écoles are full of only people who are well connected.

Basically, that was always the case, the big fancy schools.

I had done one of the best education you can do in France.

It's called the Grande école, and then the best MBA you can do in France, and in all my education, no one had ever taught me how to work.

No. No.

No one appro- The approach to work is not something they teach you.

Mm-hmm

... that prepares you for the Grande École, like Polytechnique or something like that.

Mm-hmm.

And I got admitted to some of the very good ones, but I was rebellious maybe-

Well, it, it tells you that the masters in management came from France [laughs] initially.

So those schools are, um, are really the strongest because they, um, uh, the Grande école in France, um, founded the, um, the masters in management program and so, um, have been offering those programs for many, many decades.

And, um, and the, the reputation of those schools really revolves around, in particular, the masters in management.

So HEC Paris is the, the top Grande école in France, and so, um, it makes sense that it is number one in the masters in management ranking here.

Um, so they are genuinely outstanding programs, and they have, um, great recruiter relationships and great placement across Europe.

So if you are interested in working in Europe, then, then those programs are, are fantastic options.

HEC, ESSEC, um, ESCP, um, all rank very highly in, in this particular ranking and, and those are the schools that in France are regarded as the, the top, um, Grande école in the local system.

Um, but I would say that, um, if you want to work in the US, then you, you might want to think about looking at a US school.

Thank you.

And w- EDHEC is one of France's what we call Grandes écoles, so there's a strong tradition of excellence in education here in France, and in particular in the Grandes écoles.

So, so, so that's sort of our, our environment here.

And then the MBA itself, um, is one of the programs in EDHEC's portfolio, um, probably the flagship program when it comes to international, and is designed for professionals who are looking to really pivot their careers, to internationalize, um, and to accelerate into leadership positions around the world or give an international scope to what it is they're doing, um, and, and move forward in that.

So what we now consider to be the modern research university is invented by the so-called reformed German universities of the late 18th and the early 19th century.

I'm thinking of places like Göttingen or Halle and most prominently Berlin, which decided, unlike the French reforms after the revolution during the Napoleonic era, were to create very specialized schools, the grandes écoles, which did not entirely replace the university, but superseded it in terms of centers of teaching and research.

Whereas the German solution was to modernize the university and to make it the center of teaching and research.

And that was a model that was copied everywhere from Baltimore to Tokyo.