Feedback on a French and German education

Natalie Welfens, a graduate from the Sciences Po-Freie Universität Berlin dual Master’s programme, is the 2015 recipient of the Université Franco-Allemande Excellence Award. She talked to us about what she took away from this joint French and German programme.

As as student in the Sciences Po-Freie Universität Berlin Master’s programme, you spent one year in Paris and one year in Berlin. What did you get out of this joint French and German programme?

To be quite honest, during my Bachelor’s on the Sciences Po campus in Nancy it was not easy to adapt to the French system, which was completely new to me. I went to a “normal” German high school, without any Abi-Bac track, nor did I spend a year in France like many of my fellow students did. Being one of the best French-speakers at my high school, I assumed that at least language-wise I would not have any problems. But I quickly found out that literature analyses of Molière and Sartre have little to do with a lecture on European Union law in French, without any power points and many French acronyms of EU institutions.

Although the cultural differences were quite challenging at the beginning, there were also many positive sides to it: eventually understanding the different approach, finally being able to understand formal French and developing strategies to cope with the workload have become tools that I will be able to use again in other challenging situations and contexts. Furthermore, such differences were less of an issue during my Master in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action at the Sciences Po Paris School of International Affairs, since it is a very international graduate school.

Apart from the academic aspect of the programme, it is first and foremost the social and cultural experience that made my studies very unique: you meet, discuss, live and laugh with people from all over the world, without considering them as “the Americans” or “the French” anymore. Sharing interests becomes more important than having the same religion or nationality. You develop a truly transnational mindset throughout your studies, which is more important than any final grade. It’s priceless.

Your master's thesis, which earned you the 2015 UFA Excellence Award, was about education, and in 2011 you interned at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany. Can you tell us about your interest in education? How did you come to focus on this field?

From my perspective, education is the most powerful tool we have as a society, and the often neglected solution to many problems and challenges we are confronted with nowadays. It is key for social mobility, for the integration of migrants, for shaping a critical mindset, and it is the place to develop a sense of civic responsibility, the sense of citoyenneté. The latter point especially really differs between France and Germany, I think.

Although education might in fact be a powerful means for transformation – and a preventive instead of a reactive policy response – its effects are often only revealed in the long term, whereas politicians mostly need quick results. European policies are a good example of that: many of the political measures to reduce the youth unemployment rate are rather superficial window-dressing, which might reduce the rate in the short term but not in the long term.

You are currently a research associate at FU Berlin. What are your plans for the future?

I am currently at something of a fork in the road. As I am preparing a PhD on gender mainstreaming in European asylum policies, I could see myself staying in academia and pursuing a career in the academic world, but I also like the more practical, hands-on political work.
This year I co-founded a grassroots thinktank called Polis180, which combines these two worlds remarkably well. Working in a thinktank, which is the interface between research and political practice, would definitely suit my interests. But I also learned that life is full of surprises and often less coherent than what you envisaged in your career plan or list of personal goals. So I also might end up doing something else completely. I will let you know in ten years from now…

Photo (from left to right): UFA President Patricia Oster-Stierle, Natalie Welfens and Claude-Anne Savin (Arte) at the 2015 UFA Award Ceremony