“LIKE organising a shipwreck in order to find out who can swim,” is how Alain Peyrefitte, then France’s education minister, described his country’s non-selective system of recruiting university students half a century ago. Peyrefitte hoped to transform the system by introducing selective admissions. He failed, and instead triggered the student uprising of May 1968. Now President Emmanuel Macron, attempting a similar reform, has also brought students out on the streets (see article), and the French hear echoes of soixante-huit. But he is right to try to reform a wasteful higher-education system, just as Peyrefitte was. France’s model is inefficient, inequitable and allows too many young people to sink without a chance.

Napoleon who?

That model traces its roots to 1808, when Napoleon Bonaparte introduced the baccalauréat and decreed that anybody who passed it was entitled to a place at university. For many years, keeping that promise was easy because so few held what was then an elite qualification. In 1950 only 5% of pupils attempted the baccalauréat. That has changed dramatically: these days almost everyone takes the bac and, in 2016, nearly 80% of pupils passed it. Yet the entitlement has not changed. The bac’s holders still have the right to enter the university of their choice to study the course of their choice. So youngsters with only rudimentary maths may sign up for a maths degree and those who have little acquaintance with the past can read history.

Since the costs of public university are paid almost entirely by the state and the fees are low—an average of €189 a year ($227) in 2017—the results are predictable. Universities are overwhelmed. In the first year, thousands jam into lecture halls designed for hundreds. Professors cannot offer the support that laggards need. Most students drown: many drop out after a year, but some struggle on, retaking exams again and again. In all, over 70% fail to complete a degree within three years. The same system prevails in Italy and bits of Latin America.

Odd as it may seem, this “republican” model of higher education commands great support in France, so Mr Macron is treading lightly in his attempts to reform it. He is not—heaven forbid—saying explicitly that universities should “select” students (the word is political dynamite). He is merely proposing that they should be able to require those who wish to study a particular degree to have some basic knowledge of the subject. But opponents of reform suspect (probably rightly) that any conditions for admission will lead to more stringent rules—which is why the students and the left are marching.

The arguments for reform on efficiency grounds are obvious. Jamming up publicly financed universities with people who are never going to finish their degrees is not a good use of taxpayers’ money. But the system is also unfair. It promises students a leg-up in life that most of them will not get, and it induces them to spend a year, and sometimes several, pursuing a dream that is likely to be dashed.

Even in terms of égalité—the issue that matters most to its supporters—the “republican” system fails. Measured by the share of people who get degrees but whose parents didn’t, France does not do well by the disadvantaged, performing below average among rich countries. But it provides plenty of opportunities for the rich and clever, through an elite system that floats above the public one with which the masses must make do. Around 8% of students go to the grandes écoles, the highly selective elite universities with whose existence French egalitarians seem strangely comfortable. Around 18% attend private universities. And many who can afford it go abroad. France has one of the highest rates in the rich world of study abroad. In a survey by Studyportals.com, French students were more satisfied with their time abroad than those of any other big European country; foreigners studying in France were less satisfied than those in any other such country.

Because the risk of a backlash is so high, Mr Macron is wise to move slowly. But if he is to make French higher education more efficient and more equitable, he needs to succeed in these first steps, and then build something better. America is not a great model. Its system is highly selective at the top, not at all at the bottom, and has a huge drop-out rate, the consequences of which are borne by the students who emerge with no qualifications but lots of debt. Britain’s and Australia’s system—selective universities paid for largely by graduates who are earning enough to afford the loan repayments, and a low drop-out rate—is probably the best on offer. But it will be a long time before France is ready for that sort of revolution.