The landscape of higher education and research in France is undergoing great transformation processes that aim at the formation of larger research and teaching units. These include universities, national research centres and also the traditional institutions of elite education in France: the grandes écoles. Up to now the French government has mobilised ca. 77 billion euros for its Programme d’investissements d’avenir [Future investment programme] (MESR 2025) for the landscape of higher education and research to be internationally more competitive. How will these transformation processes affect the very selective French grandes écoles that are strongly anchored in a national republican culture that dates back to the French revolution? The Écoles normales supérieures (ENS) are among the most renowned grandes écoles and Bourdieu (1989) locates them at the intellectual and scientific pole of these institutions of elite education. They are challenged by these processes of internationalisation and globalisation and are being obliged to redefine their institutional habitus. Based on an outline of current developments and challenges for the field of grandes écoles in France we discuss the position and the positioning of the ENS de la rue d’Ulm and the ENS de Cachan [since 2016 École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay] within the higher education and research landscape in France facing these current transformations. This analysis is based on a qualitative research project on the institutional habitus of the ENS, including 18 semi-structured expert interviews with lecturers from these institutions, websites of the ENS and other related representational documents as well as participant observation of culture-related events of these grandes écoles.

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