A platoon of officer-students from France’s Ecole Polytechnique was in Delft last Friday for a lecture series and whirlwind tour of the campus highlights.
Who could blame them for yawning and dozing off during lectures, these French engineering students who had just arrived in Delft on the red-eye express from France%boarding a bus in Paris at 1 a.m., arriving in Delft six hours later. A sleepless night on a bus followed by a morning lecture on “The International Dimension of Dutch Education” is enough to put anybody to sleep. Yet, despite their sleep-deprivation, the group of 300 students from France’s prestigious Ecole Polytechnique remained remarkably attentive. But then, Napoleon, for one, would expect such discipline from them: He once called Ecole Polytechnique “the goose that lays the golden eggs”, in praise of the quality of this military university’s engineering graduates%recent alumnus include Valery Giscard d’Estaing, France’s President from 1974-81%and the excellence of the military technologies its graduates help produce. Today, with France a world leading weapons manufacturer, many Ecole Polytechnique graduates work in the French arms industry. In fact, such is Ecole Polytechnique’s military link that the university is part of France’s Ministry of Defense. Originally, TU Delft was also a military university, but the military traditions that remain an important part of Ecole Polytechnique have long since vanished from TU Delft student life%unless, of course, you consider drunken TU students playing paint-ball a military exercise.
Sports
Founded in 1794, Ecole Polytechnique was dubbed the “university of the future”, because it provided a link between civilian and military life. Its students experience French military life while at university and then take these experiences with them into civilian life upon graduation. And so this tradition continues today. The 4-star French general who accompanied the students to Delft certainly looked liked a military man, but the students themselves, well, most of them looked like typical TU-type students: skinny, glasses, pimples, pale. Nevertheless, Ecole Polytechnique students have a rank of aspirant, or student-officer, in the French army and receive regular military salaries while studying. After graduation, they must serve three years in the reserves. However, on the university campus, outside Paris, all the rigmarole associated with the military is largely absent: no saluting, shouting, wearing uniforms, doing push-ups in the mud. The university does retain that %strong body, strong mind% military ethic: Ecole Polytechnique students must complete a minimum of six hours of sports training per week.
Red-lights
Every year Ecole Polytechnique students visit a different EU country on the cheap%this year’s three-day trip cost 90 euros per student. Sebastien Blard, President of the Ecole Students Association, says the trip’s “a fun way to enhance relationships between our students, while also having some educational value.” So, before moving on to the red-lights and clubs of Amsterdam, the students enjoyed a “Best of TU Delft” tour, visiting the Simona Flight Simulator, Library, Botanic Gardens and Robotics department. For TU Delft, which provided a free lunch and guides, the hope is that some of these clever French students will like Delft so much that someday they’ll look back on this trip and say, “Veni, vidi…I became a TU Delft MSc student!” Blard was “impressed” with TU Delft and could envision his fellow students studying here. “Holland’s not far from France, which is attractive, but most impressive is that TU graduate programs are now taught in English,” he says. “Programs in English make studying here possible, because having to learn Dutch first makes pursuing a degree here twice as difficult.”
Who could blame them for yawning and dozing off during lectures, these French engineering students who had just arrived in Delft on the red-eye express from France%boarding a bus in Paris at 1 a.m., arriving in Delft six hours later. A sleepless night on a bus followed by a morning lecture on “The International Dimension of Dutch Education” is enough to put anybody to sleep. Yet, despite their sleep-deprivation, the group of 300 students from France’s prestigious Ecole Polytechnique remained remarkably attentive. But then, Napoleon, for one, would expect such discipline from them: He once called Ecole Polytechnique “the goose that lays the golden eggs”, in praise of the quality of this military university’s engineering graduates%recent alumnus include Valery Giscard d’Estaing, France’s President from 1974-81%and the excellence of the military technologies its graduates help produce. Today, with France a world leading weapons manufacturer, many Ecole Polytechnique graduates work in the French arms industry. In fact, such is Ecole Polytechnique’s military link that the university is part of France’s Ministry of Defense. Originally, TU Delft was also a military university, but the military traditions that remain an important part of Ecole Polytechnique have long since vanished from TU Delft student life%unless, of course, you consider drunken TU students playing paint-ball a military exercise.
Sports
Founded in 1794, Ecole Polytechnique was dubbed the “university of the future”, because it provided a link between civilian and military life. Its students experience French military life while at university and then take these experiences with them into civilian life upon graduation. And so this tradition continues today. The 4-star French general who accompanied the students to Delft certainly looked liked a military man, but the students themselves, well, most of them looked like typical TU-type students: skinny, glasses, pimples, pale. Nevertheless, Ecole Polytechnique students have a rank of aspirant, or student-officer, in the French army and receive regular military salaries while studying. After graduation, they must serve three years in the reserves. However, on the university campus, outside Paris, all the rigmarole associated with the military is largely absent: no saluting, shouting, wearing uniforms, doing push-ups in the mud. The university does retain that %strong body, strong mind% military ethic: Ecole Polytechnique students must complete a minimum of six hours of sports training per week.
Red-lights
Every year Ecole Polytechnique students visit a different EU country on the cheap%this year’s three-day trip cost 90 euros per student. Sebastien Blard, President of the Ecole Students Association, says the trip’s “a fun way to enhance relationships between our students, while also having some educational value.” So, before moving on to the red-lights and clubs of Amsterdam, the students enjoyed a “Best of TU Delft” tour, visiting the Simona Flight Simulator, Library, Botanic Gardens and Robotics department. For TU Delft, which provided a free lunch and guides, the hope is that some of these clever French students will like Delft so much that someday they’ll look back on this trip and say, “Veni, vidi…I became a TU Delft MSc student!” Blard was “impressed” with TU Delft and could envision his fellow students studying here. “Holland’s not far from France, which is attractive, but most impressive is that TU graduate programs are now taught in English,” he says. “Programs in English make studying here possible, because having to learn Dutch first makes pursuing a degree here twice as difficult.”
Comments are closed.