Paul from Paris

In Paris last week, I found the city refreshingly quiet. Over dinner, my American visitors asked whether, as rumor has it, there was a mass exodus of vacationers in August, and how French society could function during peak vacation season.

Some organizations –courts, schools, some factories– and some small businesses –bakeries, butcher shops– do close for about a month, with all employees vacationing at the same time.

But at most organizations, employees leave on vacation on a staggered schedule, leaving behind a skeleton crew to carry on business. (Paradoxically, if you’re around Paris in the Summer and are working with someone else who is, too, you can accomplish an extraordinary amount of work.)

Who leaves when? Keeping a vacation schedule is a discipline and art unto itself in France. In some organizations, human resources staff are dedicated just to vacation scheduling.

One key moment in the process is when an employee will “poser ses vacances”. To my ears, the language is stronger than “requesting” or “putting in for” vacation. It’s more like “claiming”, much like a Wild West miner would put in a claim to look for gold under a patch of dusty scrub. There’s at least a possibility of negotiation; the claim isn’t a demand.

In some organizations, higher-ups pull rank: the boss decides when he’s going, assigns his secretary time off based on his schedule, and allows other subordinates to be off only when he’s back.

But in most settings, there’s discussion over coffee or around the water cooler to work out who leaves when. In the economy of vacation planning, there’s a hierarchy to the arguments that can be used. The strongest currency is suffering, usually described operatically. There’s usually at least one colleague who hasn’t been on vacation for decades and who’s been worn down by work (single-handedly saving the company, several times) and personal circumstances (death of pet cat and pet dog, in the same month that car keys were lost). Down a tier from suffering, parents have first dibs over the childless, by reason of school vacations (that stretch from the beginning of July through the end of August, making this claim comparatively weak). Finally, couples have priority over single people, on the grounds that both partners need to coordinate their schedules. So single people take advantage of lower, off-season rates and make their colleagues jealous with tales of exotic travel for a pittance.

Much ink has been spilled over the relative extent to which Americans and Europeans work (or don’t). Commentary tends towards the judgmental and membership in one of two schools:
• The work ethic school describes longer American working hours in glowing terms, as proof of industry, and disparages shorter European working hours as evidence of laziness.
• The public choice school is less judgmental or moralizing, and explains shorter European working hours as a collective choice or tradeoff that optimizes utility: Europeans forego a nice second car in order to spend more time with the kids.

A recent article from Fortune caught my eye. The article summarizes academic research by Richard Freeman, Ronald Schettkat, and Richard Rogerson. The gist of the article is that Americans and Europeans actually work about the same amount. The difference is that Americans work in the marketplace, whereas Europeans work at home. For example, Americans pay someone to mow the garden lawn, whereas Europeans do lawn mowing themselves. Similarly, Europeans prepare meals in their home kitchen, whereas Americans go to (fast food) restaurants.

I’m not convinced by the explanatory power of this view. Specifically, I’m skeptical whether it holds up at high or low levels of income or wealth.

But I do find compelling observations of big differences between Europe and America in service-sector employment, especially entry-level, low-wage jobs. Friends and colleagues report anecdotes to me that support this. A couple of French friends expressed amazement at the presence of baggers in American supermarkets. Likewise, an American couple expressed dismay at the scarcity of child care in Europe (despite heralded crèche arrangements).

The New York Times carried an eye-catching article on America’s changing ethnic makeup.

The US Census Bureau reported on this trend. The Census Bureau considered:
• the relative proportion of “minorities,” a term grouping ethnic Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians (in other words everyone other than non-Hispanic Europeans),
• in each county in the United States, the county being the basic administrative subdivision of each of the 50 states, with counties in the east generally being smaller or more compact than counties in the west.

When considered in this way, some of the most populous counties in the US turn out to be “majority-minority”, a confusing term of art meaning that most of their residents identify with a minority group. These counties (with the major city indicated parenthetically when unfamiliar) include:
• Much of New York City: Bronx, Queens, and Kings (Brooklyn);
• Cook (Chicago), Illinois, with the largest African-American population (1.4 million) in the country;
• Los Angeles, which has the largest minority population of any county in the country (7 million), the largest Asian and American Indian populations, and also the largest population (2.9 million) of non-Hispanic Europeans;
• Elsewhere in California: San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside, and Santa Clara (San Jose);
• In Texas: Dallas, Harris (Houston), and Bexar (San Antonio);
• Miami-Dade, Florida;
• Maricopa (Phoenix), Arizona.

When you visit big cities or growing cities in America, you’ll likely encounter ethnically diverse residents.

The New York Times recently described a new, direct-to-voicemail service. It allows callers to leave a message on a cell phone voicemail, without actually speaking to the person called. The service apparently is promoted as a way to announce breakups and other bad news, or to create an appearance of staying in touch.

This service is just a tool. If it catches on, it will find a place among text messaging and e-mail.

But I find this news service unnerving, because it sends confusing signals on finality and dialog.

Finality is sometimes under-appreciated. A “final offer” is often anything but, and instead a loud signal to negotiation. Yet in many situations, it’s important to state, plainly and clearly, that one party is putting an end to discussions. The voicemail service sends a confusing message about finality because the usual response to a message is to call back, or at least to expect a follow-up call.

Telephone conversations are usually used to have a discussion. This is an obvious point. But the new voicemail service sends confusing signals here as well, because it’s designed for one-way communication. What the service brings to my mind are telephone-based services where a caller interacts with a machine, for example to learn about movie times or flight schedules, or to cancel a magazine subscription.

Maybe there’s an opportunity for a letter-writing renaissance, as letters are good to mark and ending. And maybe we should think more about e-mail habits, especially mass cc’ing and reflexively sending a reply, particularly when the only added content is “yes”, or “good point.”

Perhaps more than their neighbors, French leaders abhor a slight, real or imagined.

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University publishes a ranking of universities worldwide, most recently the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2007. The ranking has received considerable attention, from the press and from the world of higher education, notwithstanding the obscurity of its source.

Not surprisingly, the top schools tend to be private and in the USA. No French school is in the top 10, and only a handful are in the top 100.

This rankles French leaders to no end.

One French school, the Ecole des Mines de Paris, put out its own ranking, using a different methodology (it looked at where leading CEOs went to school). French schools score well in this ranking.

A French senator, Joël Bourdin, recently submitted a 108-page report on rankings. This is a subject that he takes very seriously, and seems to see as a national problem or threat. He’s not alone in this preoccupation. Bourdin’s report includes a poll, which reports that a solid majority of the French higher education crowd: is aware of the Shanghai rankings; knows where its institution stands in the rankings; and is actively trying to boost its standing.

Valérie Pécresse, French minister for higher education and research, wants to make a European ranking a priority for the French presidency of the European Union, and plans to unveil a scheme at a conference to be held in Nice next November.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly set Pécresse a target of placing 2 French schools in the top 20, and 10 French schools in the top 100, of a ranking, from Shanghai or elsewhere.

It’s dispiriting to see so much attention paid to perception rather than action. And it’s discouraging never to hear a strong point of French higher education (shared with several of its neighbors): fulfilling a mission to offer many students broad access to higher education. Finally, it’s frustrating that so little voice is given to a graver problem: what does French higher education offer to the bottom quartile of entrants, many of whom stumble and get stuck, without earning a degree?