From: garrigue@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Jacques Garrigue)
Subject: Re: Engineering studies in USA and France
Organization: Dept. of Information Sc., University of Tokyo.
	<2AC9D9BD.7639@news.service.uci.edu>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 03:37:31 GMT

In article <2AC9D9BD.7639@news.service.uci.edu> jpd@chaos.eng.uci.edu (JP Delplanque) writes:

 >  Do you wish it was that way in France, or have you been buried so long
 > in Taupe that you actually believe what you write?
 >  If theoretical physicists and mathematicians are so "envied and respected"
 > in France, why do most of the few Taupins who have the choice between Normal
 > Sup and X choose X?

  I should first correct what is a statistical error, but was may be
true a few years ago. But the choice for Normale Sup is now highly
majoritary (only 20% choose X, and all those who enter Normal Sup had
actually the choice). Whereas they know they will be paied less
finally. And I know mant people who went to an engineering school but
would have prefered doing maths.

 >   Why are the French researchers in these fields making so little money? 
 > Why is it that a "Maitre de conference" in France makes barely more than 
 > some grad students here? (and believe me grad students don't exactly make 
 > millions!...)

  Still many people, originally prepared for engineering school, chose
research. Maybe that means that money is not so important in France.
And that there are advantages in teaching too : much more holidays and
freedom. And living in France is not so expensive : are not engineers
and managers a little overpaid?

 >  Mathematics is only a tool, for engineers and most scientists. There
 > is no need to get into it as deep as the French Grandes Ecoles system
 > does. But then they do that only for selection purposes. It is
 > defnitely more important for engineers and most scientists to have a
 > good understanding of basic physical phenomena, backed-up by a
 > sufficient knowledge of the mathematical tool.

  You are right, maths is there mostly for selection, and this is done
on the capacity of abstraction. But I think it is a good formation to
thinking. You may not need the knowledge of maths in your daily work,
and may forget everything very quickly, but you use the ways of
thinking. And then you have the question of what is a `sufficient
knowledge' ? Is it just enough to apply the formulas? Or enough to
deduce them from more fundamental ones. Of course, if you use your
formula everyday you will not forget it, so there is no need to deduce
it, but can you say that you have real understanding if you don't
understand the mathematical counterpart?


  Last, an answer to the answer:

> Finally if those engineers were THAT brilliant, how come france is
> hardly making it in terms of economy..... See how brilliant our
> managers are : we could at least do what the japanese did for a while
> that is to copy...  but we're not even that smart. Finally, those
> governement owned companies which allow this X problem i was talking
> about to pertain, are not even making giant profits as expected... 
> just for example look at why the cellular phone is having problems to
> develop in france... I could speak on thomson and others but it would
> be to damm easy. For info you may wanna read francois de closets's
> last book 'toujours plus'.....

  Well, there is certainly a problem in the French system, but don't
think you would solve by replacing ingeneer managers by business
school managers. Just look the other side of the Atlantic to see what
can happen with this mentality. The French system is over-centralized,
and the only way to handle such a system is elitism based on
`intelligence'. When you stop it, without proper structural
re-organization, expect a catastrophy. That happened many times in old
China...

  Conclusion : in my opinion the French system is not good, but you
have to think a lot before changing it.

	Jacques
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Jacques Garrigue	University of Tokyo	garrigue@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
	Inf. Sc.	Ecole Normale Superieure,Paris  garrigue@dmi.ens.fr