Why France's Napoleonic Exam System Is Broken

France’s school-leaving exam, known as "Le Bac" (short for baccalaureat) is an institution badly in need of a shake-up but also deeply resistant to change. As such, it's an excellent test of the reformist mettle of French President Emmanuel Macron, whose education minister recently announced a shake-up of the system. On Tuesday, a parliamentary committee began its internal examination of the reform.

The bac was created by Napoleon in 1808 as an entrance exam for public universities, and it still gives a blanket legal right to graduates to attend the university of their choice. For a long time, this made sense: In 1950, 5 percent of high school finishers received the bac; in 1960 it was 10 percent. But with the drive to open higher education to the masses, and the egalitarian spirit that followed the May 1968 student protests and the first Socialist government in the 1980s, the bac took on new significance. In the late 1980s, the government set a goal of 80 percent bac holders per cohort, which was promptly achieved by lowering bac standards. In 2017, 87.9 percent of takers received the bac.