Like every year, the Parcoursup list of first cycle courses in private higher education is published in a decree and an annex in the form of a catalog. In 2026, we can count 3230 private training courses under student status, of which 1371 (43.7%) are BTS. IThere are also 7,668 private apprenticeship courses of which 6,413, or 84%, are BTS.
Parcoursup, the showcase of private education
In the logic of the student orientation and success law (ORE Law), Parcoursup displays private training on the same level as the public, and organizes competition between establishments on the basis of largely biased criteria. The Ministry of Higher Education can always argue its desire to regulate the market and put in place means of control, the platform maintains the promotion of questionable and contested training. The decree of February 19 regulating the dereferencing procedure after a check pointing out dysfunctions, obviously does not give much… We are discovering the new referencing this year of establishments of the Galileo group whose practices have nevertheless been denounced in Claire Marchal’s book, The Cube Flammarion, 2025. in the schools of this group, everything is geared towards profit and families often pay the price.
No matter, the ministry has therefore chosen to reference three BTS by apprenticeship from the ESARC of the Galileo Group, a school of communication professions which has just been established in the Rouen metropolitan area! Perhaps we should also see the validation of the practices of the Rouen metropolis which supports this private establishment, among others, via its attractiveness agency (sic), Rouen Normandy Invest? This is one example among others.
Baptiste bill, the culmination of a privatization project
There is much to be said about the way in which local authorities embrace private higher education, sacrificing any reflection on the effects of the commercialization of education and ultimately refusing to develop quality public education for the greatest number. the pattern is often the same: local authorities finance and the State legitimizes by granting official recognition of training.
This is the system that the Baptist law known as the regulation of private higher education wishes to see set in stone! For the moment withdrawn from the agenda of parliamentary debates, the bill is suspended. It aims to create two categories of private establishments, establishments in partnership with the State and those benefiting from approval attesting to the quality of their training, this recognition being materialized by referencing in Parcoursup.
Philippe Baptiste evokes a“overhaul of private higher education” autour de deux cercles : “A circle with public universities and very large private training courses, which are really in an extremely narrow circle of trust, with social and research obligations. A second circle, a little wider, where there will perhaps not be all these obligations, but where we will have a certification capacity.” France Info, June 2, 2025
BTS a danger?
For many private pharmacies, the BTS recognized by the State represents the “head of the gondola” to attract customers and better sell them worthless and very expensive training. Very difficult to find your way around when these same pharmacies play with words, between Master and “master” for example, to better deceive young people and their families!
In a context of demographic decline, what will become of public BTS under student status (also referred to as school) while they are subject to the dual competition of apprenticeships and large private groups?
In certain academies, when it comes to discussing the map of training in public high schools, rectorates and regions point to “critical tensions on the BTS sectors with many vacant places and which requires significant in-depth reflection” (Bourgogne-Franche-Comté)…
Apprenticeship, driving force behind the privatization of BTS
