The French grandes écoles – the Écoles normales supérieures (ENS) are among the best-reputed grandes écoles – are traditional institutions of elite education with a strong national republican character and are currently challenged by processes of the internationalisation and globalisation of the landscape of higher education and research. Since 2006, a successive “fusion mania” (Musselin 2017: 226) can be noticed of French universities, grandes écoles and other national research institutions to create larger research units that are competitive in international university rankings. What does this development mean for the ENS that Rubenstein (1990: 6) designated in the 1990s as the “Queen of the academic system” in France? In our paper we present some results of a qualitative empirical study that includes two ENS: the École normale supérieure de la rue d’Ulm and the École normale supérieure de Cachan [since 2016 École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay]. Based on a critical theory of elite education (e.g. Bourdieu 1989) we discuss the results of an analysis of semi-structured expert interviews with 18 lecturers at the two ENS with a focus on their constructions of an institutional identity.

--