The PIE: And France has a real advantage with Francophone Africa, too.

OCP: Yes. I think Francophone Africa accounts for 50% of our students in higher education, with Morocco our top market followed by China.

The PIE: Is France getting involved in offshore education like the UK and US?

OCP: No, we’re quite late on this. Some business schools like SKEMA, HEC, ESSEC, and other top ranking French institutions, or engineering schools like Central in Shanghai are active and have campuses abroad. But they are small units. There is also the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi, our most famous branch campus, but this is the only major international branch campus we have.

“Francophone Africa accounts for 50% of our students in higher education”

But in general we’re behind, and Campus France is working with its university members to help them access information and advice on branching out overseas. There is growing interest in it and the French regions are working together to promote campus development in markets like Brazil.

The PIE: What’s your advice to French universities that want to internationalise further?

OCP: Well, we’re a good example, as our mission is to promote French HE and help universities to get more exchange and academic cooperation agreements signed with academic partners. That’s why we attend all these institutional fairs like NAFSA or APAI in Asia. We do many B2B meetings and student fairs and organise bilateral meetings between our government and foreign governments concerning education.

The PIE: And what sort of things do you do in-market to attract students?

OCP: We have 50 events a year around the world, most of them student fairs, but we also have offices in-country that work with local universities doing conferences and open days on the French higher education system. We try to be visible inside universities, too.

“We’re behind in TNE, but Campus France is working with its members to help them access information and advice”

The PIE: Do you support the use of agents?

OCP: We are very flexible about agents. In India for instance, our office in New Delhi offered training to local agents to familiarise them with French HE so they market our universities accurately. So in a country where the agent system is well organised and associations exist to maintain standards, as you see with BELTA in Brazil, then it’s easier for us to work with agents. In Turkey we’re dealing with Turkish agents.

But unlike the British Council we are not developing specific agent training certificates. Maybe we should consider these things, but it’s not our position at the moment. In France there is still some scepticism about private operators profiting from education so we need to come to an arrangement that makes everybody happy.