Tribune "Supporting the University means having ambitions for the future".

Almost all the university heads (a list of some sixty co-signatories) are calling on their elected representatives to vote for a budget that gives higher education establishments the means to operate.

Our country's public Higher Education and Research are in great danger. Weakened by the steamroller of information disorder, by algorithms fueled by buzz and violence, and by the growing disqualification of science, they risk no longer being able to play their indispensable role in the construction and transmission of knowledge and democratic values if the arbitrages against them in the 2026 Finance Bill are confirmed.

It has to be said in no uncertain terms: without strong universities, our society will decline, our young people will have no prospects, and our economy will malfunction. International competition, already ruthless, will make our country a negligible quantity scientifically, and therefore geopolitically and strategically.

To retain its capacity for innovation and influence and its sovereignty, in Europe and beyond, to be able to face the dual challenge of sustainability and acceleration, France must therefore make the assertive choice to support its public Higher Education and Research, in other words its University and national research organizations.

For we have many assets! Scientific discoveries are the cornerstone of new technologies which, in every field, are transforming industries, creating innovative products and services to create jobs, improving our collective performance and well-being.

26,500 more students

Let's not spoil the talent either! As the 2026 session of Parcoursup opens, let's respond to young people's desire to choose university. Their enthusiasm is solid: in 2024, our establishments welcomed 26,500 more students than the previous year. They are counting on us to provide them with a quality education that is regularly assessed and accessible to all, so that they can acquire the skills they need to work in the professions of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, acquire the multidisciplinary technical culture they need to make the most of technological change and development, and develop a critical mind and the ability to discern in the face of global upheaval. Thanks to the University, young people will be ever more creative and inventive, able to blossom, to project themselves into scientific careers, to simply become themselves.

With municipal elections just a few weeks away, it's also essential to remember that in terms of employment, wealth creation and attractiveness, our universities are a driving force behind territorial ecosystems. They infuse them with considerable dynamism. Their direct and indirect economic, social, environmental and cultural impact is irreplaceable. Health, energy, artificial intelligence, food, green industries, urban planning: from labcoms to industrial chairs, via incubators, local competitiveness is stimulated by universities.

As we have said on numerous occasions over the last few months, we are not resigned to our universities being the poor relation or the adjustment variable in future budgetary arbitrations. Supporting universities means having confidence in the future. Supporting the University means being proud of who we are: a country with a long history of scientific progress, enlightened debate, intellectual openness and curiosity. Supporting the University means believing in our youth.

We once again ask the national representation, the deputies and senators of the Republic, to guarantee sustainable funding for our establishments so that they can serenely carry out their public service missions, and to preserve the trajectory of the Research Programming Law.

Universities are the beating heart of democracy, a pillar of open universalism, a condition sine qua non of our common and united future, in the face of the deadly forces carried by certain ill winds of geopolitics. This is no mean feat!

The debates on the occasion of the 2026 Finance Bill are not over. These debates are not just technical: they are also, and above all, political. At a time when China, Germany, South Korea and many others, in both the northern and southern hemispheres, are investing massively in their Higher Education and Research to make them part of a genuine national and transnational strategy, France must make the choice to fund its universities to the level of their needs.