"Those departments marked with a star are either already full or are subject to a restriction on numbers," the pretty girl in the information office of Lyon's Third University explains as she flutters her eyelashes. Careful inspection reveals that all those courses by which there is a star seem to have names that have an "applied" or "modern" look about them.

In one of the prestigious departments of Lyon's Second University--the economics department--the professor is telling the students about how to deal with entrepreneurs and what to pay attention to when applying for a job. The students listen attentively and furiously take notes. The only noise they make is that of pens on paper.

"We hope to supply an excellent environment for study," Mme. Thomas-David of the international relations office of Lyon's First University explains. She adds that another of the objectives for which the university is striving is, "To enable the students to find work after graduation."

This is the ninth ranking university in the world according to the Gourman Report and the second best in France. Can this really be what is filling the heads of the romantic French on this most idealistic of campuses?

The end of the Silk Road: Lyon has the glamorous name of "silk capital" due to its position at the end of the Silk Road. Silk weaving was the earliest commercial intercourse between France and China and has flourished since the Renaissance up to the present. It is because of this connection that Lyon was the first place in France where Chinese language was taught--not inside school but for merchants to do business.

The history of Lyon University can be traced back to it having once been a provincial study center in the thirteenth century. When it really took off, however, was when a surgical academy was set up during the Renaissance. Later on it expanded to become a medical academy and then came to encompass the local academies of science, humanities and law until it eventually became a fully integrated university. In 1811 it formally took the name Lyon University, and in 1896 France passed a bill of higher education which put all universities in the hands of the state. Lyon became a national university and its budget is now allocated by the central government. The registration fee for students is only 500 francs (about US$70).

Is this background as a commercial city and surgical academy the reason for Lyon University's current pragmatic course?

Not necessarily. The real reason is the earthshaking student revolt that changed the whole of the French education system. It was also this 1968 rebellion that came to split in two what was originally an institution united out of several disciplines.

Ten years--enough! "When I came to France in 1956 the whole of Lyon University was one school," says Li Chen-sheng, deputy professor of the Chinese department at the Third University, as she points at the river banks. "The two sides of the bridge were of the same style, but now there are two different architectural bodies."

In post-war France higher education was still held to be the preserve of the upper echelons of society. With the baby boom by the end of the 1950s in full swing, a lack of resources meant a drop in the quality of education. Bowing to the demands of public opinion, in 1958 the de Gaulle government began a reform of the education system.

After ten years the reforms bore little fruit. In 1959 the number of students going on to university (including specialist academies) was only 9 percent of the age group, which went up to 15 percent in 1968. Moreover, university remained the preserve of the upwardly mobile classes, while the children of peasants and workers were lucky to get a look in--and even then it was only to go into the most unpopular disciplines. The sought after departments of law and politics remained out of reach.

The quality of education had also not improved. Statistics reveal that in 1968 the ratio of teachers to students in the humanities was 1 to 53; in law and social sciences it was 1 to 50. At the same time in Britain the corresponding proportion for both was not more than 1 to 9.

Everybody was impatient with the pace of reform. "Ten years--enough!" was thus one of the slogans of the student movement.

The May Revolt: On March 22, 1968, the students of Paris occupied the campus of the Sorbonne. At the beginning of May they were expelled by the police. A nationwide boycott of lessons followed and on May 14 workers joined in by going on strike. A wave of labor unrest followed. This episode, which affected the whole nation and led to the resignation of the president, the changing of the minister for education and the dissolution of the National Assembly, came to be known as the "May Revolt." It was not until the beginning of July, and the holding of a general election, that the situation returned to some semblance of normality.

Among the main demands made in the May Revolt, which continue to influence the French system of education today, were calls for equal opportunities in education, participation (meaning student participation in the running of the campus and courses, such as strengthening exchanges between students and teaching staff), improvement of quality, autonomy for schools, and every university having its own special character. Apart from this, the structural unemployment afflicting people after higher education was also a hot point: in 1968 there was a total of 510,000 students at university but only half of them found suitable employment. So another of the student demands was to "combine study with the needs of society."

It was from this point that "pragmatism" began to play an important role in university education. With France's present level of 10 percent unemployment, this continues to be a highly sensitive issue.

As for languages, in basic training for would be researchers and teachers, "we naturally try to respond to the interests and needs of the students," says Li Chen-sheng, who has been a teacher in the Chinese department of Lyon's Third University for 21 years. In earlier days, second-year students in the Chinese department studied the Chinese classics. Now, however, apart from occasional selections of T'ang poetry, this has been replaced by comparatively practical courses, such as "how to write letters."

Pragmatism takes command: The number of students in the Chinese department changes with fashion. With the mainland fever of the 1980s, there were about sixty new entrants each year; interest fell following the Tienanmen massacre so that there were only twenty new students last year; following eliminations and dropouts there are now only about ten students in each year.

So as to be more competitive in the jobs market, students study for two degrees. In the Chinese department they often supplement their studies with economics or law, which can be used for doing business with China or for giving legal advice to trading companies.

Combining studies like this is all very well, but is this professional direction really what universities are for?

"Universities should follow an academic course and not just be places for professional training. Many old professors found the changes that followed 1968 very painful," says Li Chen-sheng, adopting a taciturn tone of speech which is a long way from that of a few minutes ago when she was proclaiming, "Lyon's Third University is a conscientious university constantly adapting to the needs of students." Sixty-five this year and about to retire, she frankly recognizes that although the courses were too theoretical before, after completely going along with the demands of the students, "You feel there is something missing in your heart."

Two levels split--three universities established: Another important effect of the 1968 student movement on Lyon University was that it led to a division of the school. Under the heading of "every university must have its own character," Lyon at that time first split into the First and Second universities. The former concentrated on the natural sciences while the latter specialized in the social sciences. After five years, because of political differences, the Second University split again into a leftist Second University and a rightist Third University. The most direct difference between them is that so far the Third University has never had a student boycott.

With the universities having established separate administrations, the students only need to register at one of them to get an identity card that will allow them to use the resources of all three.

The First University has continued the Lyon tradition of medicine, physical sciences and engineering. The Second and Third are concerned primarily with law, economic management, literature and history and language, but both have developed different reputations over the past twenty years. For example, the Second University's departments of economics, music and language are all held in high regard, as well as its theatrical research department which is the only one in the whole country. The Third University takes its character mainly from language study, offering 23 different foreign language departments.

The numbers of students also increased after 1968 and is still on the up today. There is at present a total of 60,000 students at Lyon.

"Previously you could find work after graduation from high school. Now, however, the competition is ever more fierce and everyone wants to try to get a better academic record," points out Mme. Thomas-David. "The ever increasing number of students has already become a serious problem."

Seriously overweight and unwilling to slim: To cope with the large number of students there is a huge amount of construction work going on all over the campus with "work in progress" signs sprouting up everywhere. The Second University built a second campus in the suburbs planned to hold 8,000 students, only to find on completion that this was inadequate. The Third University shifted lessons to the evenings but soon both day and night classes were full. The classrooms are fully used and still insufficient so that nearby middle schools have to be approached.

The three schools are all suffering from overweight. Yet, on the one hand--under the principle of "open schools and knowledge for the masses"--they accept all comers and only eliminate them after they have already entered school (although the most popular departments do have examinations or ask for proof of high school qualifications, this is only to assist in the selection of the right course)--while, on the other hand, they are all unwilling to slim down. "At present we have a total of 17,000 students, and next year we hope to increase this to 18,000," says an administrator of the Third University, having just deplored the problem of overcrowding. The reason is that the financing of the school is closely linked to the number of students: the more students, the more money the school receives from the government.

"Moreover, sustaining the burden is a very complicated problem. It cannot be solved simply by restricting student numbers," she explains. "The First and Second universities have most people. The third has already eliminated around 40 percent and alleviated its difficulties considerably. As well as this, some departments are full to bursting, while others continue to over estimate numbers. Yet so as to preserve diversity in the schools the less popular departments must be supported. In future we hope to attract more students to them."

Apart from "openness" and "diversity" in the three schools, they all have another common ambition for the future--internationalization.

Lyon City's ambition: "Internationalization is the ambition of the whole city of Lyon. The school is only one of the bodies carrying this out," Charles Gallini, who is responsible for the department of international relations and exchange at the Second University, says in French. "The world is changing and internationalization is the road we must go down."

When the French say "the world is changing" it has two connotations: first, the expansion of the English-speaking world; second, the decline of the French-speaking world. Once France had control over territory twenty times its own size, on a scale nearing that of the British Empire. Following World War Two her colonies gained independence, so that by 1962 the whole colonial empire had disappeared.

It is because of this that there are two aspects to the internationalization of Lyon University. The first is cooperation with world-famous academic institutions for the benefit of academic exchange; the second is to build up relations with universities in France's former colonies so as to shore up the French-speaking world.

Over the past twenty years the activities of the three universities in promoting internationalization--including academic exchanges and initiating joint research programs--have all been carried out vigorously so that all now have a string of renowned partners. In common with other places, the First University, with its concentration on medicine, natural sciences and engineering, has full coffers and is the most welcome to the former colonies and is therefore extremely active. The Second University has 54 joint programs under way at present. The Third University is still integrating its courses with that of its partners so that it can recognize the qualifications of foreign students. All three welcome overseas students.

The three schools all have about 10 percent foreign students, most of whom come from the former colonies. Most of those who come here from Taiwan go to study French at the language school of the Second University. The number who are actually studying for qualifications is about ten.

Academic vanguard: The number of overseas students at Lyon cannot be considered high when compared with a ratio of 20 percent in Paris. But with scarce accommodation and high living expenses in the capital, the attraction of Lyon as France's second largest center of study--with three universities, more than twenty high-class academies, 80,000 students, 20,000 academics--is becoming ever more apparent. Accommodation in Lyon is about a third of the price of that in Paris and it is only two hours to the capital by train. Lyon's geographical position as a communications center between the north and south of Western Europe, and a crossing point between France, Germany and the Mediterranean, also makes it attractive.

In history, Lyon was an area opened up by the Carolingian Empire (751-987), but it lost out in the competition with Paris. Although today Paris's position as the capital, its scale of development and international renown are all beyond the dreams of Lyon, her one remaining hope is to tip the academic balance. The role of Lyon University is therefore of the greatest importance.

French internationalism? Or a French world? The problem is that no matter whether it might be the First, Second or Third University, although everyone is talking about internationalism, the information that is available to the public is almost all in French. And in the mere three pages of English and French which give a simple introduction to the school, there are a number of mistakes in the English text.

"In theory their aim is to internationalize; yet in their hearts they really still want the world to become French," points out an overseas student.

Moreover, no matter which one of the three universities you are talking about, after the 1968 student movement the campuses have become increasingly more open, which might be of great significance as far as equality is concerned. Yet can the flood of students and the movement towards education for the professions really satisfy the demands made for a better quality of education?

Perhaps de Gaulle's statement during the student rebellion that, "It is easier to temper the ardent faith of the iconoclasts of today than to shake the deep-rooted certainties, the naive beatitudes of yesterday," can serve as a constant companion on Lyon University's long road towards becoming a center of the academic world.

[Picture Caption]

Lyon's Second and Third universities are joined along the river bank.

(Left) A view of the Second University --Lyon's earliest campus.

Li Chen-sheng has been deputy professor of Chinese at the Third University for 21 years. Lyon was the first place in France to begin teaching Chinese.

(left) To cope with increasing student numbers the Second University put up a new building in the suburbs but it is already insufficient to meet demands.

This library on the new campus shows how different the modern architecture of the Second University is from that of the old school.

(Left) A lively wall reveals the romantic side of the French character.

The emphasis at the First University is on science and engineering.

（Left） A view of the Second University --Lyon's earliest campus.

Li Chen-sheng has been deputy professor of Chinese at the Third University for 21 years. Lyon was the first place in France to begin teaching Chinese.

（left） To cope with increasing student numbers the Second University put up a new building in the suburbs but it is already insufficient to meet demands.

This library on the new campus shows how different the modern architecture of the Second University is from that of the old school.

（Left） A lively wall reveals the romantic side of the French character.

The emphasis at the First University is on science and engineering.