This is the big one for high school students in Terminale and young people in reorientation to decide on their future. They have until midnight on Tuesday to formulate their wishes in Parcoursup, the platform for admission to higher education which continues to divide, including in the speeches of presidential candidates.
A few more hours of reflection and stress for future students to register their 10 wishes maximum and 20 sub-wishes among all the courses recognized by the State, without having to classify them. However, they have until April 7 to refine their cover letters and application files.
An “ignominy” for Mélenchon
The post-baccalaureate admissions platform has caused a lot of ink to flow since its creation four years ago, with many accusing it of introducing selection at the university. Presidential candidates castigate it, several on the left proposing to delete it.
“I will repeal Parcoursup, this ignominy”, thus launched at the beginning of March Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The communist candidate Fabien Roussel, who also wants to “put an end to it”, described Parcoursup as “Koh-Lanta of professional orientation, but without totem of immunity”. Anne Hidalgo also wants to “remove Parcoursup”, “to restore fair access for French high school students to higher education”, just like Yannick Jadot, for whom “this black box system which defines your future, it is unbearable “.
The question of the transparency of algorithms
To “avoid insider trading in orientation”, Valérie Pécresse affirms for her part that she “will also make the local algorithms of Parcoursup transparent and accessible”. Emmanuel Macron, for his part, praised the “tremendous success” of Parcoursup, with “more efficient results” than the previous Admission Post-Bac (APB) system, much criticized.
If many recognize progress compared to APB – in particular the end of the draw, the creation of scholarship quotas or the information on the training provided by the platform – unions and specialists in the subject point however to shortcomings of Parcoursup.
The Snesup-FSU wants to “create new places”
For Hervé Christofol, member of the national office of the Snesup-FSU union, “we are of course not going to return to registrations on paper and queues in front of each university”, but “we must abandon the non-classification of wishes, which has created a real tension in training, and has resulted in overbooking”. According to him, it would be necessary to “create new places to remove the selection”.
The fact that the proposals are made “on the fly” is also criticized, with candidates often finding themselves on the waiting list. They will be able to receive answers this year from June 2 until September. But, “it is a procedure which is spread over several months and which creates a certain number of difficulties”, in particular “for the students who do not have the possibility of waiting until the summer to decide” , emphasizes Julien Grenet, research director at the CNRS and co-author of an INSEE study on Parcoursup.