As we know, France holds a preeminent position in international academic mobility. In 2006 it received the third largest number of foreign students (265,000), behind the United States and Great Britain and ahead of Germany, its constant competitor for this ranking. Considering the total resources employed, such a result is gratifying indeed and some observers credit it at least in part to the creation of Edufrance.
It was in 1998, fourteen years after Great Britain, that France decided to create a national agency for the promotion of French higher education, in recognition of the steady decline in our country’s attractiveness in this domain. This year the Agency is celebrating its first decade of existence, performing its missions under the name of CampusFrance and operating within the framework of its renewed status as a GIP (Groupement d’Intérêt Public – Public Interest Group). This celebration no doubt marks the end of a first phase of transformations during which the Agency’s highly economic approach to the world education market has been replaced by a focus on the administrating of missions. As we shall see, the questions raised since the Agency’s creation still remain to be answered: who defines its strategy? At what level does it operate compared to other educational mobility operators which are more concerned with managing than promoting - re more for ity operalayersmpared to other playersorphosis during which it and te Egide, CNOUS, SFERE, Agence européenne EEFF (formerly Socrates-Leonardo)? What missions has it really been assigned, given that these missions vary with the renewals of its GIP status and that since 2002 the Agency has been constantly asked to define itself ?

Without in any way taking sides (what legitimacy would we have to do so?) and being as objective as possible in our presentation of the abundant documentation, we will first examine the French State’s reasons for creating the Agency and then analyze the changes it has undergone over the years. In this way we can better assess, in the current global environment and in light of the expectations of all the various institutional players, the relevance of the organization that is struggling to emerge.

I – 1998-2002
Public policy or creation of a brand: the partial failure of the first GIP.

One has only to reread the content of the press conference given on November 6, 1998 by Claude Allègre, Hubert Védrine and Charles Josselin, respectively the National Education Minister, the Foreign Affairs Minister, and the Minister of State for Cooperation and Francophone Affairs, to understand that the fundamental elements have not changed completely since that time, despite a change in the missions assigned to the Agency. The activities developed jointly by the two Ministries through the intermediary of CampusFrance still depend on complementary skills and expertise - in the respective administrations and abroad in the field. A complementary relationship of this nature was already implemented by Great Britain, which back in 1984 created the Education Counselling Service in line with the New Public Management approach*.

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*For a well-documented comparison of what could have passed for a transnational transfer of public policy, see the excellent article by Anneliese Dodds, a researcher at the London School of Economics: Dodds A., le Développement des agences en Grande-Bretagne et en France : l’exemple d’Edufrance, transfert d’outre-manche ou création indigène ?, Revue française d’administration publique 2004/3, No.111, p. 483-500.