What Goals for Higher Education? Towards a Learning Society with a Commitment to Sustainable Development

Fifty years after the student revolt of May 1968, Futuribles is devoting a dossier in this issue to the outlook for higher education in France. After Jean-François Cervel’s article on the French system and the challenges it faces today, François Taddei lays out the goals that higher education has — or ought to have — for the development of our societies. At the end of an interview by Jean-François Cervel and Alain Michel, he highlights the need to inject more creativity and concrete activities into courses, and also to develop citizenship and encourage students to engage in such a way as to meet the great issues of tomorrow in social, environmental terms etc. He also stresses the need to move towards greater interdisciplinarity in a rapidly changing world. In this way, Taddei shows how higher education can and must change to help further the goal of a learning society, acting to promote responsible, sustainable development.