ABSTRACT
A French lycee can span the divide between secondary and higher education when some of its pupils undertake a course leading to the qualification of brevet de technicien superieur or one that prepares its students for the competitive examinations that have to be sat for entry into the grandes ecoles. The grande ecole can be either state or privately owned though they virtually all come under the aegis of government departments. Naturally the Ministry of Education oversees the functioning of the great majority-two thirds of them-but the Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for over twenty and the Ministry of Defence for about a dozen. The part of the higher education sector is formed by the Instituts universitaires de technologie. Edgar Faure immediately began a process of consultation to discover how best to reform the universities. Autonomy is a relative term but in the case of French universities it has to be applied in a restricted sense.
