Jospin gives Allegre HE job

Lionel Jospin, prime minister of France, this week named Claude All gre as minister for education, technology and research. Mr All gre, a geophysicist, had been widely tipped for the post and was Mr Jospin's higher education adviser from 1988-91. He took a prominent part in discussions on the cabinet line-up at the start of the week.

Mr All gre had been head of the Institut du Physique du Globe, based at the Jussieu campus in Paris.

Mr Jospin's new left-wing coalition government has kindled hopes of better times in French research institutes. Public research bodies are struggling with a 1.3 per cent budget cut, down for the first time in ten years since Jacques Chirac, then prime minister, wielded the axe.

There was a sense of expectation in universities after the left's convincing election win. The Socialist party's manifesto promised to relaunch the higher education development programme, Universite 2000, set up by Mr Jospin when he was minister of education from 1988-91 and in which Mr All gre was heavily involved.

Socialist party officials were saying this week that a mini-budget to boost this year's public spending would include research and education among the top priorities.

But Mr Jospin has promised an audit of the outgoing government's spending and appears to be faced with a massive shortfall in an already tight 1997 budget inheriited from former premier Alain Juppe.

Most difficult to satisfy will be the demands of students, who had already threatened strikes next term if a student aid system long promised by President Jacques Chirac is not implemented.

The new prime minister's previous experience of government at the education ministry, where he led the greatest ever expansion of higher education, was grounded in his earlier university career as an academic.

* World View, page 16