Each year, hundreds of thousands of high school students are invited to “formulate their wishes”, on April 2, they must have finalized their files for an answer on June 2. Behind the Parcoursup procedure, an implicit but tenacious logic reigns, that of rational projection in the known, stable, planning professional. As if, at 17, it was possible to have a clear vision of your job of tomorrow.
All the more in a world where tech transforms uses faster than institutions integrate them. This logic is (science) fiction. Parcoursup requires definitive answers to poorly asked questions in a system that ignores what the world of tomorrow will be made.
Parcoursup: an injunction of early lucidity, in a world of which everyone is unaware of what it will be.
French education still works as if the professions were stable categories, attached to specific diplomas, gold:
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- THE World Economic Forum esteem that 65 % of children entering primary school today will exercise a profession that does not yet exist.
- In France, The training repository evolves more slowly than the technologies that it claims to cover (Cybersecurity, AI, Blockchain, Cloud, Quantum, etc.).
In this context, requiring a linear orientation is less of planning than methodical absurdity.
A system designed for an industrial world that gives way to a digital world
Parcoursup values coherent routes, motivated projects, assertive choices. He pushes students to build a vocation story, while The majority of recent innovations are the fruit of bifurcations, tests, lateral explorations.
Who, at 17, could have declared wanting to become:
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- Prompt Engineer For generative AI models?
- Ethical Hacker in a banking cybersecurity cell?
- Product Ops in a SaaS scale-up?
- UX Researcher For a predictive health app?
These professions are neither in the brochures of the IOCs (Information and Orientation Center), nor in the RNCP (National Directory of Professional Certifications) standards.
An orientation that locks experimentation
Learning must precede the choice, not the reverse. Or Parcoursup requires “formulating a project”, where you should discover, test, adjust.
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- The system values narrative conformity, not curiosity.
- He punishes indecision, when she is often healthy at this age.
- He encourages “check the right boxes”, rather than identifying transferable, adaptable, hybrid skills.
The problem is not logistical. It is cultural. An industrial logic of orientation is applied to an innovation economy.
What should be changed: ask other questions
Rather than asking a student “what he wants to do later”, we should ask him:
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- What do you want to learn this year?
- What do you already know how to do it, without realizing it?
- What problems of the world wonder or stimulate you?
- In which environments do you work efficiently?
- What could you explore before deciding?
These questions are not intended to produce a career declaration, but to initiate a learning trajectory. This is the condition for training citizens capable of evolving in an unstable world, not candidates for an administrative competition.
France has built a flow management tool, not an orientation tool. Parcoursup sorts, class, distributes. But he does not prepare in the future. It starts from the principle that the courses must be consistent, that the choice precedes action, and that the institution knows the needs of tomorrow.
The service to know: EDUMAPER, to find the essential information for its orientation
PS: As the Parcoursup site indicates, no need to use artificial intelligence tools, the trainers are familiar with this type of writing and that does not correspond to what they expect.
