Old School, New Age.(Ecole Nationale d'Administration in France)

Charles de Gaulle established ENA, the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, in 1945 with characteristic flourish and an unerring instinct for la Grandeur. He staffed it with former members of the Resistance. Its campus stood majestically--symbolically--in the Rue des Sts-Peres, the Street of Our Fathers. The first graduating class was deified as "Veterans." His vision: to assemble the nation's best and brightest, groom them for power and send them into the world to assume their rightful stewardship of the glory that is France. Six of the 14 prime ministers of the Fifth Republic passed through its hallowed corridors, as have scores of ministers, diplomats and industry chief executives. Gaullist President Jacques Chirac is an enarque. So is his socialist prime minister and nine of the 27 ministers making up the current coalition government. Tycoons Jean-Marie Messier of Vivendi and Michel Bon of France Telecom proudly bear its mantle. If the practice of bureaucracy could ever be elevated to high art, ENA was its apprenticeship.

How the mighty have fallen. Today its growing critics call ENA: Old- fashioned. Irrelevant. Out of touch. The French, eager to embrace the Internet age, seem to be fed up with the tradition-bound grande dame. Industry leaders have usurped the pride once reserved for the state and its servants by embracing the New Economy and, with it, new ways of thinking, working and living. Young people are heeding their call; the most desirable places to work, these days, are no longer the august bureaucracies of yore--the Finance Inspectorate or the Transport Ministry. Instead, France's hotshots are opting for private industry. Rather than the stolid, functionary training they would get at ENA, they increasingly prefer M.B.A.s--if they go to graduate school at all. "There isn't any prestige associated with the state anymore," laments Jacques Julliard, a former board member of ENA who resigned last year in protest over the school's seeming inability to change. In short, de Gaulle's august institution is sunk in a crisis of identity--possibly deep enough to challenge its very survival.

To appreciate the mess the place is in, you need look no further than the headlines: Jacques Chirac has been called to testify in court concerning kickbacks from low-cost housing projects when he was mayor of Paris. Chirac has not been charged with any crime--but it is the first time in memory that a president has been summoned as a witness in such a case. What's more, some accusers claim that he in fact orchestrated the scam. The country's scandal-weary public is inclined to dismiss the flap as little more than enarque politics, leading up to the 2002 presidential elections when Lionel Jospin and Chirac are expected to face off. But this is not the first time Chirac has been tarred by what many see as an impenetrable and elitistsystem. Former prime minister Alain Juppe, a top ENA graduate reviled for his "elitism," was ousted from office in 1997, costing Chirac the Parliament and fostering a generalized anti-ENA-ism. Juppe himself actually proposed that the school be closed, a measure that was never put to a vote. Says Michel Mangenot, of the Political Science Institute in Strasbourg, "ENA has never been threatened as seriously as it is today."

Perhaps the most serious threat comes from the private sector. Since 1982, according to a recent survey, the number of enarques going into business has doubled. The phenomenon, known as pantouflage, or "putting ...