“The selection for the master’s takes place too early”
[ad_1]
This column appears in The world of education. If you are subscribed to World, you can subscribe to this weekly newsletter by following this link.
Not all students with a bachelor’s degree (bac + 3) can continue their studies for a master’s (bac + 5). A selection takes place before entry into the Masters, and only the most deserving are admitted, within the limit of available places. In concrete terms, more than 10,000 applications have been submitted for the start of the September 2022 academic year at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris-Est-Créteil, for a few hundred master’s places.
Master’s selection has always been in place, but the old organization (master’s degree in four years, followed by a year of postgraduate studies) involved selecting students at the end of the fourth year. At first, despite the new LMD organization (three-year bachelor’s degree, two-year master’s, doctorate), students with a bachelor’s degree passed without filter into the first year of the master’s, and it was always on the threshold of the fifth year. that they were selected.
Recently, the selection was advanced by one year, to intervene at the threshold of the master.
At first sight, this way of proceeding has its logic. It consists in admitting only students identified for their ability to follow a high-level specialized education, in small groups – thus breaking with the large license amphitheatres. However, after a few years of experience of this new era of selection, we can feed some criticisms.
An architecture that has not been reviewed
Often, the architecture of the teaching of the masters (in law, at least) has not been reviewed to adapt to the logic of the new bachelor-master organization. It remains largely modeled on the old version. The first year of the Master’s remains a general education, with only a pre-specialization. The pooling of courses remains the rule (in order not to multiply the costs), so that many students find themselves in the amphitheatres. So what was the point of having advanced the selection of students?
Above all, when the selection took place at the end of the fourth year, it was done mainly on the basis of the results obtained during that year, the year of pre-specialization. The student had already been able to show his appetite and potential talent for the coveted specialization. Better still, he could be judged as he had become, matured by the education received over four years, which made him a student very different from the high school student he was.
You have 46.32% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
[ad_2]
Source link
