Université Paris-Saclay ends its status as an EPE and moves towards the integration of the universities of Évry and UVSQ

In the coming months, the university will take on two new institutional changes:

• The final stage of the integration of the universities of Évry and Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) into Université Paris-Saclay on 1st January 2025, currently associate member institutions, in accordance with the principles approved by the Université Paris-Saclay Governing Board on 12 January 2023.
• Université Paris-Saclay will end its status as a Public Experimental Institution (EPE) and transition to the status of a Great Institution (Grand établissement in French) (1). This will allow the university to: stabilise its main strategic priorities, chosen collectively in 2018-2019; continue developing the university with its 14 founding members (constituent faculties and institutes, Grandes Écoles, associate member institutions and partnering national research organisations); simultaneously formalise the integration of the universities of Évry and Versailles Saint-Quentin-en Yvelines, and continue to improve what has already been achieved.

The status of an experimental public institution is granted by the French government for a minimum period of two years and a maximum of eight. It has allowed Université Paris-Saclay to build the institution as it is today, deploy common objectives for the institution’s 14 members and share a core foundation, in order to:

• Structure and fuel teaching and research activities carried out together
• Create the Paris-Saclay Undergraduate School, the Graduate Schools and the institutes which coordinate our shared activities
• Accredit educational programmes: 360 undergraduate degrees (2), 578 Master’s programmes and 21 shared Doctoral Schools (3)
• Develop collaborative research in 230 laboratories and platforms, encouraging interdisciplinarity.

Ending the university’s status as an experimental public institution means confirming and securing these choices.

Initiating the process of changing statuses now gives the university the chance to take stock of the past four years with its communities. It also provides the French High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES) with an opportunity to assess, during the first semester of 2024, whether the objectives set when the university was created have been met, in order to consider, in the autumn of 2024, a definitive end to the experimental status on 1st January 2025, by vote of the Governing Board. This calendar will make use of the work undertaken for the benefit of the university’s quinquennial assessment by HCERES and establish a course offer within an institutionally consolidated university.

After several months of debates in the university’s various bodies, the Governing Board meeting on 4th July 2023 will decide on the involvement of the university in the preparative work linked to the changing of statuses.

The goal today is to consolidate shared achievements, develop the university’s core missions in education, research and innovation in an ever more integrated manner, improve operating modes, and secure the future of the institution’s ambition as an international research-intensive university, offering undergraduate to PhD-level programmes, with a strong commitment to its various local areas.

Notes:

1. Other French EPEs are currently undergoing the same work and procedures as Université Paris-Saclay or have already ended their status as experimental public institutions. CY-Cergy Université, Université Côte d’Azur, Université Gustave Eiffel, Université Grenoble-Alpes and Université Polytechnique des Hauts-de-France are currently requesting to change from EPEs to Great Institutions. Paris-Sciences & Lettres is currently a Great Institution.

2. Including 13 double degrees

3. Source: 2022 annual performance report