Economist, May 5, 2018 (II)

choi

(1) French universities | Non-Selective Nonsense; Students with shaky maths should not have a right to take a taxpayer-funded degree in the subject.
https://www.economist.com/news/l ... rance-where-grossly

Note:
(a) Alain Peyrefitte, then France's education minister failed to reform admission to French universities, after students protests in 1968. "Now President Emmanuel Macron, attempting a similar reform, has also brought students out on the streets (see article [do not read it]), and the French hear echoes of soixante-huit [French for sixty eight; nouns: soixante 60 and huit 8 (French for six is six (same); soixante came from Latin noun sexāgintā 60]."
(b) "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. * * * 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. [Students flunk out.] * * * 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."

My comment:
(a) You do not have to read it. If you do, you can stop in the first several paragraphs.
(b)
(i) English dictionary:
* baccalaureate (n; etymology: from Latin)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/baccalaureate
(ii)
(A) baccalauréat (noun masculine; from the same Latin root as English noun baccalaureate)  Wiktionary.
(B) baccalauréat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalauréat
("often known in France colloquially as bac * * * Although it is not legally required, the vast majority of students in their final year of secondary school take a final exam. Unlike some US high school diplomas, this exam is not for lycée completion but university entrance")
(C) French-English dictionary:
* lycée (noun masculine; etymology: Aristotle's gymnasium near Athens): "a public secondary school"https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lycée

Compare cynic (n; Did You Know? -- about Antisthenes's gynasium outside Athens)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cynic

choi

(2) Demography and Its Consequences | Small Isn't Beautiful. The working-age population is already shrinking in many countrie, and the decline will accelerate. But demography is not quite destiny.
https://www.economist.com/news/i ... es-suffer-shrinking
("Lithuania is unusual in having an anti-emigration party. The small Baltic country, with a population of 2.8m (and falling), voted heavily in 2016 for the Lithuanian Farmer and Greens’ Union, which pledged to do something to stem the outward tide. * * * Workers began to drift away almost as soon as Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. The exodus picked up in the new century, when Lithuanians became eligible to work normally in the EU. For many, Britain is the promised land. In the Pegasas bookshop just north of the Neris river in Vilnius, four shelves are devoted to English-language tuition. No other language—not even German or Russian—gets more than one.  Mostly because of emigration, the number of Lithuanians aged between 15 and 64 fell from 2.5m in 1990 to 2m in 2015. The country is now being pinched in another way. Because its birth rate crashed in the early 1990s, few are entering the workforce. The number of 18-year-olds has dropped by 33% since 2011")

My comment: It is up to you whether you want to read the rest. If you do not, you do not miss much.
(b) tuition (n; etymology):
"1: teaching or instruction, especially of individual pupils or small groups  <private tuition in French>
   1.1 : North American  a sum of money charged for teaching by a college or university"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/tuition