Job: “Professional bachelor’s degree is not enough to find a job”

It’s not yet 5pm this Friday. Dmitry*, with a bag on his shoulder, has just walked through the door of the Beaugrenelle high school in the 15th arrondissement of Paris: the holidays are starting, and he has just smiled back. It must be said that 17-year-old Dmitry does not really like school, “with all these courses that we are forced to take for no reason.” However, this final year Professional Management Administration (GA) student plans to do it again next year, enrolling in BTS if possible to achieve a BA+2. “I’m very grateful,” he explains. A GA bachelor’s degree on its own is not advanced enough to get you a job. There are many things that I don’t know how to do and that are not in the program. And I learn almost nothing during the internship. »

What is the value of the exam he will take in June along with all the other high school graduates? Dmitry is not the only one who asks this question. According to our information, “by the end of October” two working groups should be created on this issue in the Ministry of Public Education, in parallel with the announced more general reflection on undergraduate education. Experts will work on ways to improve the professional baccalaureate and CAP qualifications, which in total affect 40% of French secondary school students.

More general graph

If we consider the ways envisaged in the Rue de Grenelle to restore the image of the professional sector and presented in recent weeks to several teaching unions, the trend will be towards the convergence of professional bachelors with higher rankings in technological and general areas. The curriculum could therefore be restructured so that the BEP Intermediate Diploma, which all students take in Year 1, becomes the expected examinations for the Professional Baccalaureate degree. A way to limit the number of tests and continuous assessments that students are currently exposed to.

Additionally, rather than focusing on vocational subjects from the second year onwards, young people will follow a more general timetable at the end of secondary school than today, with more hours of lessons in fundamental subjects and an overview of the different trades in their sector. Specialization in a particular field is only possible in 1st grade, just as young people studying the general route wait until 1st grade to choose between a science, literature or economics bachelor’s degree.

“If I wanted to study literature, I would get a B.A. L.”

At the end of Bogrenell High School, where about 300 students are trained in the professions of sales, management and reception, we welcome the idea… with a certain coldness. “As someone who works as a courier after school five days a week, I don’t have time for homework, sorry,” warns Julien*, 16. “At the same time, maybe with more general courses, everyone will stop believing that everything is easy in a vocational high school…” Aliu slips in, not believing it himself. “What good is it to me to know conjugation tenses that I will never use? If I wanted to study literature, I would have received a bachelor’s degree L,” Dmitry reacts inexorably.

The fact remains: the young man, like many of his comrades, did not make much choice. It was his college, after a chaotic academic career, that decided that he would enroll in administrative management. The same is with Aliu: “In principle, I wanted to follow the general path, but a dispute arose…” He does not despair of returning to higher education: “Why not to a master’s degree, like my brother,” he says. But to do this, we need high school to better explain to us what we can do after bachelor’s degree. »

*Names have been changed.