University reform was an ongoing discussion among 19th-century French academics. Indeed, until the 1880s there were very few higher education faculties. While the “professional faculties” (law, medicine) had a specific function, stipulating the requisite grades to exercise certain professions, the so-called “academic faculties” (arts, sciences), established by an 1808 decree, were restricted to verifying grades and training the examination boards for the bachelor degrees. Alongside these academic faculties there were the higher schools: the École Normale de Paris, briefly established in 1794 and reinstated as a Pensionnat normal in 1808, provided teacher training in the sciences and humanities. Other écoles had more restricted fields: the École des Chartes (1821), École des Langues Orientales (1795), and École du Louvre (1882).
In the 1840s, as a consequence of the Catholic struggle against state-controlled education, the July Monarchy undertook reforms which lightened the teaching-control load of the academic faculties, and created new faculties; however, the remit and viability of these soon foundered. Faced with this impasse, a number of academics who were committed to giving faculties a scientific vocation, began to campaign for their reinvigoration; they conducted this campaign in the pages of periodicals such as the Revue des deux mondes, Revue politique et littéraire, and Revue scientifique.
But it was not until the Second Empire, with the appointment of Victor Duruy as Minister of the Public Education in 1863, that significant progress was made. In 1868, a survey on French education revealed the miserable state of the French sciences, the mediocrity of libraries and laboratories, the dearth of funding, and the inertia of the faculties. Duruy then carried out a reform based on a clear distinction between teaching and research. As part of these reforms, the École pratique des hautes études was established (1868). It was to train generations of philologists, publicists, and historians.
The defeat of 1871 was a renewed, brutal reminder of France’s political and cultural decline. German pre-eminence was registered at two levels in particular: intellectually, confirmed by the prodigious quantity of German academic publications; educationally, in the departure of many students for Germany. Germany’s intellectual superiority was seen in conjunction with its political and military might. The need for a thorough educational reform was felt in various spheres of civic society. The Catholic campaign to liberalize state control led to the act of 12 July 1875 affirming the freedom of higher education. Within the academic community, the Société de l’enseignement supérieur was founded in 1878; its reformist agenda was profoundly influenced by German academic models. Among the 24 founding members were Marcellin Berthelot (1827–1907, chemist, science historian), Emile Boutmy (1835–1906, political scientist and founder of the École libre des sciences politiques in 1872), the linguist Michel Bréal, historians Fustel de Coulanges (1830–1889), Ernest Lavisse (1842–1922) and Gabriel Monod (1844–1912), the medievalist and philologist Gaston Paris, and other intellectual luminaries such as Louis Pasteur, Ernest Renan, and Hippolyte Taine. The Société grew from its 221 members in 1878 to 514 in 1880. Reform policies undertaken by the Third Republic targeted three main areas: the improvement of material conditions, the autonomy of the teaching community, and the establishment of regional universities.
