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While many universities around the world live in terror of charges of elitism, the president of one of France's oldest universities has turned exclusivity into a veritable art form by referring to "street-sweeper" institutions that pick up those would-be students who fail to get into universities like his.

Jean-Robert Pitte, president of the Sorbonne in Paris, told the Associated Press that tuition fees should rise to ?2,000 a year, from ?200, and more selective admissions procedures should be introduced.

He said that the measures would reduce the 55 per cent dropout rate, adding that France's lower-cost universities were the "street-sweepers of the education system", picking up all those who failed to gain entry to the country's more expensive and selective grandes ecoles .