[The Origins of Contemporary France Volume 5 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link bookThe Origins of Contemporary France Volume 5 (of 6) CHAPTER I 32/99
In this way, the heavy expenses are already met, and the State, the general-manager of the service, furnishes simply a very small quota; and this quota, mediocre as a rule, is found almost null in fact, for its main largess consists in 6400 scholarships which it establishes and engages to support; but it confers only about 3000 of them,[31131] and it distributes nearly all of these among the children of its military or civilian employees This way a son's scholarship becomes additional pay or an increased salary for the father; thus, the 2 millions which the State seems, under this head, to assign to the lycees are actually gratifications which it distributes among its functionaries and officials: it takes back with one hand what it be-stows with the other .-- Having put this in place, it establishes the University.
It is not at its own expense, however, but at the expense of others, at the expense of private persons and parents, of the communes, and above all at the expense of rival schools and private boarding-schools, of the free institutions, and all this in favor of the University monopoly which subjects these to special taxation as ingenious as it is multifarious.[31132] A private individual obtaining diploma to open on a boarding school must pay from 200 to 300 francs to the University; likewise, every person obtaining a diploma to open an institution shall pay from 400 to 600 francs to the University; likewise every person obtaining permission to lecture on law or medicine.[31133] Every student, boarder, half-boarder or day-scholar in any school, institution, seminary, college or lycee, must pay to the University one-twentieth of the sum which the establishment to which he belongs demands of each of its pupils.
In the higher schools, in the faculties of law, medicine, science and literature, the students pay entrance and examination fees and for diplomas, so that the day comes when superior instruction provides for its expenditures out of its receipts and even shows on its budget a net surplus of profit.
The new University, with its expenses thus defrayed, will support itself alone; accordingly, all that the State really grants to it, as a veritable gift, in ready cash, is 400,000 francs annual income on the public ledger, a little less than the donation of one single college, Louis-le-Grand, in 1789.[31134] It may even be said that it is exactly the fortune of the old college which, after being made use of in many ways, turned aside and with other mischance, becomes the patrimony of the new University.[31135] From high-school to University, the State has effected the transfer.
Such is its generosity.
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