ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the deep change in the academic system—in its main centers—that resulted from the appearance and rapid development of organized research. The massive influx of research funds, especially in the natural sciences and the medical field, accelerated the professionalization of the majority of professors and consequently diminished the importance of their educational role. Separation of higher education from research is also an outstanding feature of the French academic organization, which is the least integrated of all. Indeed, it consists of four elements, more or less loosely interconnected, depending on the field of knowledge: the universities, the higher schools and all the engineering schools, the great higher education institutions and the research organizations. In the preceding society—that of liberal industrialization—the university was not at the center of the cultural and social system. Professors are specialists who fulfill a social demand and help strengthen it by the very success of their work.
