France wary of fraud as private for-profit institutions boom

The French government must do more to protect students from fraudulent practices amid a proliferation of private, for-profit higher education providers, experts have warned.

Private, for-profit institutions have rapidly multiplied in France in recent years, with the government estimating that they have enrolled up to 15 per cent of the country’s current students.

Former MP Estelle Folest, co-author of a 2024 parliamentary report on the sector, attributed the growth to the “demographic boom” of the 2000s and an increased “demand for diplomas”, pointing to the “inability of public higher education to accommodate an increasing number of students”.

Another contributing factor to the “explosion” of private, for-profit institutions, Folest told Times Higher Education, was a 2018 law on “the freedom to choose one’s professional future”, which relaxed restrictions on vocational education and apprenticeships. For-profit providers capitalised on the “meteoric boom” in apprenticeships that followed, said Folest.

Exact data on private, for-profit institutions was difficult to obtain, said Julien Jacqmin, associate professor of economics at Rouen-based NEOMA Business School. “Campuses are opening up and closing down in the blink of an eye,” he said. “It’s very complicated to track.”

In the absence of sufficient regulation, Folest said, “fraud and abusive practices” have been reported in the sector, including “false information about the content of a training course”, misrepresentation of qualifications and “financial disputes over tuition fees”.

Last month, education minister Élisabeth Borne and higher education minister Philippe Baptiste announced a new mechanism to remove misleading or fraudulent courses from the online application platform Parcoursup, citing “abuses” including “training courses closing overnight” and “registration fee scams”.

“Private training courses can meet the expectations of high school graduates and their families. But we must fight relentlessly against fraud and scams, which too often affect the poorest families,” Baptiste said. “Delisting such courses from Parcoursup is an essential first step.”

However, the majority of private, for-profit institutions do not operate through Parcoursup, Jacqmin said. “If you walk around in France and look at the bus stops next to high schools, it’s full of advertising from those institutions, and one of their arguments is not going through Parcoursup,” he explained. “They say, ‘Just call us and you’ll be able to enrol quickly.’” The government’s delisting procedure is “a good signal”, he said, “but I don’t think it’s going to change much in terms of disciplining those schools”.

“There needs to be better information available to students,” said Jacqmin, a recommendation echoed by Folest. “The ministry of higher education must keep an eye on the content and the quality of teaching, in order to protect our youth and fight against illegal practices that are developing,” she said.

“The state has a duty to regulate this sector. As things stand, few companies seem to be fraudulent, but we must not allow a market that escapes all the rules to flourish.”

 emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com