Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities (France)

Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities is the official name of a French law aiming at revamping entirely the French public higher education system. The bill was presented by the French Ministry of Higher Education Valérie Pécresse and was officially voted on 11 August 2007 by the Parliament. The law is commonly referred to as the law LRU (after the acronym of the official name), or Law Pécresse. It is sometimes called the law on the autonomy of universities, because the law give universities more financial autonomy, so that the government will stop funding them.

The text of the bill consists of six titles. The first title recall public service and higher education's mission. The second title is about the management of universities. The third deals with the new responsibilities for universities. The three other titles give additional details about the reform.

The bill was rapidly voted by the Parliament in July 2007, and definitively adopted on 1 August 2007, less than three months after Nicolas Sarkozy's election. The university students, on holidays during the vote of the law, began to express their discontentment in October 2007.