Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
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Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#2Can anyone tell me why French institutions are so inept at translating their sites into English. It must be on purpose, a big f-u to non native French speakers.
Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#3I feel like Saclay won't rival Silicon Valley any time soon.
To me, part of the magic of silicon valley has little to do with Stanford (although the article references Harvard??) or the mega businesses, but the overall culture of northern california.
For example, would Apple Computer have happened if Steve Jobs had never done LSD? How about BSD? Or many other highly creative and innovative systems.
Maybe it's a coincidence but the European hewing towards authoritarianism thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#4A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. – John Gall
Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#5Can anyone tell me why French institutions are so inept at translating their sites into English. It must be on purpose, a big f-u to non native French speakers.
C'est exactement ce qui se passe.
Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#6This entire article seems to misunderstand what Silicon Valley is, what universities are, and the difference between them. It's rather typical of the French statist approach, where change comes from top-down policy initiatives, rather than from bottom-up civic and economic activity. How bureaucrats does it take to teach a class on entrepreneurship?
French universities, in my personal experience, are deeply underfunded (i.e. we can't afford chairs in all the classrooms), and the French economy is hardly in a position to support this new, vaster agglomeration.
Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#7Can anyone tell me why French institutions are so inept at translating their sites into English. It must be on purpose, a big f-u to non native French speakers.
For a long time French people were mostly unconcerned with learning English. Maybe it's like that in other European countries too, I don't know, but I have lots of French friends so I know its true for them. The French have a lot of pride in their own language, although most of the ones I know wish they were > (speak English).
Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#8Can anyone tell me why French institutions are so inept at translating their sites into English. It must be on purpose, a big f-u to non native French speakers.
For a long time French people were mostly unconcerned with learning English. Maybe it's like that in other European countries too, I don't know, but I have lots of French friends so I know its true for them. The French have a lot of pride in their own language, although most of the ones I know wish they were > (speak English).
"Maybe it's like that in other European countries too"
No, it's not. In most of the nothern or eastern european countries peoples are easily learning and speaking english and other languages. The frenchs are just the french exception. :)
Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#9Can anyone tell me why French institutions are so inept at translating their sites into English. It must be on purpose, a big f-u to non native French speakers.
The French are big with preserving their language. They once fined GE 600K€ for not translating some manuals into French.
Re: Why France is building a mega-university at Paris-Saclay to rival Silicon Valley
#10This entire article seems to misunderstand what Silicon Valley is, what universities are, and the difference between them. It's rather typical of the French statist approach, where change comes from top-down policy initiatives, rather than from bottom-up civic and economic activity. How bureaucrats does it take to teach a class on entrepreneurship? French universities, in my personal experience, are deeply underfunde…
It would be naïve for anyone to think that recreating Silicon Valley exactly would be a French goal. Trying to achieve similar success in a more centralised, government-driven way sounds much more plausible.
Such an approach has been unsuccessful when tried elsewhere (at least by the number of places declared to be the new Silicon Valley and never heard from again), but the French do seem oddly better at achieving success in a statist fashion than many other places are.