06 qualification and recruitment of teacher-researchers

In 2013, 2,099 teacher-researchers were recruited into the corps of professors and lecturers. About 44% of these became qualified during the 2013 session, in other words immediately prior to this recruiting campaign. The proportion of teacher-researchers who are foreign nationals increases on a regular basis and currently stands at 17% for lecturers. Endo-recruitment accounts for 22% of lecturers and 55% of university professors.

Qualification for the functions of university professor or lecturer is a pre-condition when applying for the competitive recruitment exam to become a teacher-researcher. Once qualification is awarded by the National Council of Universities (Conseil national des universités - CNU), it is valid for 4 years. In 2013, the qualification session organised by the Ministry received 21,937 applications, with one person being allowed to submit several requests for qualification under different disciplines (which are in fact submitted to different discipline-related sections of the CNU) or to each of the two teacher-researcher bodies. In 2013, members of the CNU examined 17,768 separate applications in all and approved 11,193 qualifications for 8,397 different individuals, i.e. 64.1% of the 13,137 candidates (chart 06.01).

Only a fraction of these newly qualified candidates put themselves forward for the competitive examination to recruit teacher-researchers: in 2013, almost 60% of qualified professors and more than 40% of qualified lecturers did not take the exam in the year following their qualification. They can take it during later recruitment campaigns according to the vacancies available or they can use this qualification in other ways for the purposes of their professional career.

2,614 vacant positions were available on 1st September 2013, almost 400 fewer than for the previous recruiting campaign, and were published in the Official Journal in order to recruit lecturers and professors for higher education institutions. Between 2010 and 2013, the number of vacant posts for professors and lecturers decreased by 24.5% and 20.7% respectively, which represents a 22.1% reduction overall in the number of jobs available (chart 06.02 and chart 06.03).

These positions can be filled, in the first instance, by secondment or transfer. Secondment is a method that is not used often: 2 lecturers and 10 university professors, or 0.5% of positions available. Transfers were already used infrequently but in 2013 their use fell 2.7% compared with 2012, and they represented 13.4% of positions available.

On the basis of 2,114 jobs still waiting to be filled after transfers, secondments, higher education agrégations, and specific recruitment processes, 1,968 of these positions were filled through the competitive exam, or 93.1%. Of the 592 university professors recruited, 87.4% came from the body of lecturers (chart 06.03). The average age of the university professors recruited was 44 years and 11 months, and for the lecturers, 33 years and 7 months.

Women represented 41.4% of appointments (31% of professor and 45.5% of lecturers).

Concerning the background of the new lecturers, 15.8% came from posts as Temporary research and teaching assistant (Attaché temporaire d'enseignement et de recherche - ATER), coordinators or readers and 33.8% worked in research outside higher education (chart 06.04).

The legislation concerning the appointment of tenured teacher-researchers allows for the recruitment of foreign nationals. In 2013, 7.6% of lecturers appointed were from another European Union country, 9% were from the rest of the world. The international attractivness of France and the general trend towards a growing globalisation of teacher-researcher recruitment can be clearly seen from this increase in the share of foreign teacher-researchers. While teacher-researcher numbers increased by about 60% between 1992 and 2013, the proportion of foreign teachers increased by 225% over the same period (chart 06.05).

Internal recruitment remained stable compared with 2009, but was more pronounced for professors than for lecturers. In 2013, 77.9% of lecturers and 45.1% of professors arrived from a different institution than the one to which they were appointed.

Marc Bideault