ABSTRACT
What — viewed in perspective — is involved in the publicity, at times kindly, sometimes maladroit, at other times malicious, given to the experience we have had at Orleans University? Two things: on the one hand, in the distribution of universities in the regions of France, a crucial element of decentralization and, more precisely, the establishment of a Université de la Couronne called into existence to relieve pressure on the cancer of the Parisian university, that enormous and ailing monstrosity. On the other hand, in the field of educational planning: the university complex of Orleans-La Source seen as a campus which puts itself forward as a model, drawing its own inspiration from the Anglo-Saxon example. Does not one often hear of the ‘French Oxford’ in full flower on the banks of the Loire?
