Tuition fees, capped at a little over £3,000 since 2003, will suddenly triple in many higher education establishments.
Certainly a year of change, flux and uncertainty, and not a very comfortable one for many higher education institutions.
Many higher education institutes running practice-oriented degrees employ technical instructors to teach the areas not covered by the theory in the lecture rooms.
When a student dies, Facebook and Twitter can unite a community, yet many higher education institutions shy away from engaging in this way.
But citing other universities' experiences with crises, many higher education officials and crisis-management specialists predict that the effects will not last a year.
"I can't see how many universities can continue like this – the financial ruin this is going to cause will inevitably mean many higher education institutions think long and hard about teacher training".
And the dependency of many higher education institutions on Chinese students to meet their international student recruitment goals means that the country will continue to be a dominant part of international strategies in the short to medium term.
Public universities are bracing for severe cuts and private colleges' endowments are plunging in the financial recession, causing a chill at many higher education institutions, where partial or full-fledged hiring freezes have been imposed.
In Essonne, around Saclay and Orsay, many higher education and research facilities have been established, with the région accounting for more than 40 percent of France's employment in this field.
"Many higher education systems in the region are still in transition phase — leaving old systems and coming to new systems," said Adnan El Amine, co-author of the report, and founder of Lebanese Association for Education Studies.
