Founded 51 years ago, Cours Bufflier is the only private higher educational institution in French Polynesia.
How did you become a FEDE member?
I first heard of the FEDE in 2012 from someone who occasionally taught at Cours Bufflier and who had their own FEDE member institution in Toulon. I then heard of it again from one of my former students, who continued her studies at a FEDE institution in Strasbourg. Having heard the name twice from two different people, and around the same time, I wanted to find out more. Thanks to our FEDE membership, we really stand out from public education institutions in French Polynesia. For example, we now offer an innovative bachelor’s level programme. French Polynesia is isolated from the rest of the world: we are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the nearest country, New Zealand, is a five-hour flight away. By working with the FEDE to offer high-quality degrees locally, our students can stay and study here in Polynesia. This is really important for us.
What types of programme do you offer at your institution?
We offer BTS (French post-secondary vocational qualifications) in accounting and SME administration. Three years ago we also introduced the FEDE European Bachelor’s in Marketing; we enrol around 15 students per year. As of the 2022-2023 academic year, we are also teaching the FEDE European Master’s in Business Management and Strategy. We try to offer programmes that are as closely aligned as possible with job-market needs. For this reason, many of our courses are available in sandwich-training format. We also adapt our programmes to local job-market needs so that our students can easily find internships and then employment at the end of their studies.
We are partners of the Fédération Française de Rugby and are taking part in the Campus 2023 project, which is an off-site apprentice-training scheme focusing on the sports sector and linked to the 2023 World Cup. As part of this project, in 2021 we accepted students for enrolment in the degree Bachelor’s: Sports Organisation Administrator; we have 19 apprentices on the programme who will graduate in 2023.
Looking back to the 2022 FEDE General Assembly in Dubrovnik…
The Dubrovnik GA was the first FEDE annual general meeting we have attended, even though our institution has been a FEDE member for 10 years. So it was a great pleasure to be there. We met the FEDE team, with whom we are in regular contact, and other FEDE members. In particular, we made the acquaintance of Jean-Luc Codaccioni, Director of Icademie, an institution specialising in distance learning, with whom we have since established a partnership.
French Polynesia is very ‘spaced out’ – the islands are a good distance from one another. So offering online courses makes it possible for students to study without having to travel even to another island. Cours Bufflier provides them with a hub on the main island of the archipelago, thereby preventing them from feeling disconnected from their studies. We have a 12-hour time difference with mainland France, so it’s hard for online students to have a direct conversation with mainland programme teachers even by email – short of doing so in the middle of the night. So online lessons are mostly asynchronous, with videoconferencing organised at specially chosen times.
The partnership has three key advantages. First, we have expanded our course catalogue with new programmes that we don’t teach in Polynesia, while also allowing for local adjustments. Second, it is an opportunity for Icadémie to extend its distance-learning activities. And, finally, it means that students in French Polynesia can, without having to leave the islands, benefit from taught-study programmes that aren’t available here.
