Universities in France

Every university on this page accepts applications from students living in Africa, and France is still the first study destination for students from sub-Saharan Africa. The system rests on around seventy public universities, many of them recently merged into large, research-led institutions - Université Paris Cité, Université Grenoble Alpes, the University of Strasbourg, the University of Lille and the University of Montpellier each teach tens of thousands of students across every faculty. Next to them sit the selective grandes écoles and the private business schools. For most applicants from Africa the public university is the right first door: the same national fee in Paris as in Rouen, degrees recognised across the EU, and a direct path from licence to master’s to doctorate.

French degrees follow the European LMD pattern, and the names matter when you compare programmes. The licence is the three-year bachelor’s (180 ECTS) taught in a university faculty; the BUT (bachelor universitaire de technologie) is a three-year applied degree taught in an IUT, the technology institute attached to most universities, with small classes and long internships; the licence professionnelle is a one-year, job-focused final year. The master’s takes two more years - M1 and M2, 120 ECTS - and entry is selective at M1. Engineering is the exception: the diplôme d’ingénieur is a five-year degree from an engineering school, some of them inside universities, such as the Polytech schools.

Choose the university by subject, not by the name of the city. Université Paris Cité is among France’s strongest in medicine, life sciences and physics; Claude Bernard Lyon 1 is a science, health and sport campus, while Lumière Lyon 2 covers the humanities, social sciences, economics and management. Grenoble Alpes is known for engineering, physics, computer science and earth sciences, Strasbourg for chemistry and European law, and Toulouse Capitole for law, economics and management, with the Toulouse School of Economics. Montpellier is strong in biology, ecology and health, Bordeaux Montaigne in languages, arts and humanities, and Lille and Rouen Normandie cover almost every field.

Expect a different way of teaching. Lectures (cours magistraux) in large amphitheatres sit alongside smaller tutorials (travaux dirigés) and practical classes, and you are expected to work on your own in between. Every module is marked out of 20: 10 is a pass, 12 is a solid result and 14 or more is very good - a 13 in France is not the weak mark it looks like in a system graded out of 100. Most universities let a good mark offset a weak one within the same semester (compensation), and failed exams can be retaken in a second session. The first year of a licence is the hardest filter, so pick a programme you can genuinely follow in its language of instruction.

The price of a French public university does not depend on its reputation. In 2026-27 a non-EU student pays €2,902 a year for a licence or BUT and €3,950 for a master’s at Paris Cité exactly as in Rouen, plus the €105 CVEC, and each university may still waive part of the fee for a capped share of its non-EU students. What differs from one university to the next is everything around the fee. Many fund their own excellence scholarships for international master’s students, often through their national IDEX or I-SITE label, on top of the Eiffel scholarship and French embassy grants. Rent varies even more than tuition: a CROUS room on campus in Lille, Strasbourg or Montpellier costs a fraction of a private studio in Paris.

Use this page in that order. Start with the university list above to compare every French university in our catalog by city and number of programmes, then use the subject tiles to see which of them teach your field. Open a university to read each programme’s language of instruction, tuition, duration and intake, and its student reviews, then check the Study in France guide for the rules that apply everywhere - Campus France, the student visa and the cost of each city - before you pay a single application fee.

France has three application routes, and your country of residence, not your nationality, decides which one you use. If you live in a country covered by Études en France - Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Cameroon, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and many more - you apply on that platform: for the first year of a licence through the DAP, open from 1 October to 15 December for the following September, and for the second or third year of a licence or a master’s with the same online file, programme by programme. Holders of a French baccalauréat from a French school abroad use Parcoursup instead, and from countries outside Études en France you apply directly to the university.

Master’s admission runs on each programme’s calendar. Through Études en France most programmes take files from October to February or March and answer in spring; applicants already living in France use Mon Master, the national master’s platform, in late February and March. The main intake is September - very few French public programmes start in January. Once admitted, you pass the Campus France interview and apply for the VLS-TS student visa on France-Visas, then validate it online within three months of arriving. Work backwards nine to twelve months from the September you want to start.