ABSTRACT
The University of Paris consisted of five main faculties: law and economic sciences, medicine, natural sciences, letters and human sciences, pharmacy. The weight given to financial control as opposed to the planned equipment, and staffing of an expanding session must be reckoned to be a political phenomenon, for it is a decision about the allocation of national resources. From the point of view of reformers, the university as a whole seemed ridden with obstacles. The apparatus of laws, decrees and orders that controlled its administration, its programmes of work and even its teaching methods, was hard to set in motion. A more 'democratic' university drawing its students in more equitable proportions from the different social classes could only be achieved thanks to the reform of the primary and secondary schools. Planning in France does not control the intake of students and production of graduates, though forecasts attempt to relate them to the demands of the national economy.
