HCERES — the Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur, or in English the High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education — is France’s national authority for evaluating public higher-education institutions, public research organizations, research units, and accredited degree programs. It is the body responsible for producing the public evaluation reports that underpin quality assurance and, in many cases, state contract renewal across the French higher-education and research system. For institutions, researchers, or partners outside France working with French universities, grandes écoles, or research organizations, HCERES reports are typically the primary public record of how a given institution or research unit has been formally assessed.
Legal Basis and Status
HCERES was created by Law No. 2013-660 of 22 July 2013 on higher education and research, which restructured France’s national evaluation system. It formally replaced its predecessor, AERES (Agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur), effective 17 November 2014. HCERES’s organization and specific missions were then set out in Decree No. 2014-1365 of 14 November 2014, and its statutory basis is codified in the French Education Code (Articles L114-3-1 to L114-3-6).
HCERES holds the status of an independent administrative authority (autorité administrative indépendante). This status is the legal mechanism that is meant to insulate its evaluations from influence by the institutions being evaluated or by other government stakeholders — it is publicly funded and operates within the French administrative system, but it is not subject to hierarchical direction from the ministry in how it conducts and reports individual evaluations. Its president is selected through a parliamentary consultation process. HCERES also incorporates the Observatoire des sciences et techniques (OST), a bibliometric and science-indicators unit that had operated independently since 1990.
What HCERES Evaluates
HCERES’s evaluation mandate covers several distinct categories of subject:
- Higher education institutions and their groupings — universities, grandes écoles, and the consortia and groupings (such as communautés d’universités et établissements) that many French institutions now form.
- Public research organizations — national research bodies and scientific-cooperation foundations, and the Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR), France’s national research funding agency.
- Research units — individual laboratories and research structures, either at an institution’s request or where no other validated evaluation procedure already covers them.
- Degree programs (formations et diplômes) — accredited degree offerings at higher-education institutions, a function relevant to how French qualifications are recognized and compared internationally.
- Private-law structures receiving public funding — private entities that receive public money earmarked for research or higher education fall within HCERES’s scope for that funded activity.
Beyond conducting evaluations directly, HCERES has a second, less visible function: it validates the evaluation procedures used by other, more specialized evaluation bodies in research or in degree accreditation, rather than duplicating their work. HCERES also contributes to the definition and implementation of France’s national scientific integrity policy, connecting its evaluation role to the broader research-integrity infrastructure that CASRAI covers elsewhere — see Research Integrity Fundamentals.
How Evaluations Are Organized
Much of HCERES’s institutional and research-unit evaluation work is organized around France’s multi-year contractualisation cycle, under which each higher-education institution periodically renegotiates its performance contract with the state. HCERES evaluates institutions and their research units in successive groups, commonly referred to as “waves” (vagues), timed to align with each group’s contract-renewal period, so that evaluation evidence feeds directly into the contract negotiation rather than sitting on a separate, unrelated timeline. HCERES publishes its evaluation frameworks (référentiels) for each subject type — institutions, research units, and degree programs — setting out the criteria and evidence evaluators use.
A 2025–2026 Legislative Challenge to Its Existence
HCERES has recently been the subject of a serious legislative challenge to its continued existence, which is worth understanding for anyone tracking the French research-evaluation landscape. In March 2025, an amendment to abolish HCERES was adopted in a French National Assembly special committee, as part of a broader bill on simplifying economic life (loi de simplification de la vie économique); the full National Assembly confirmed a vote to suppress HCERES on 17 June 2025. The measure was not final at that point, since the bill still had to pass through a joint parliamentary committee (commission mixte paritaire) reconciling the Assembly and Senate versions. That committee met on 20 January 2026 and reached a compromise text that removed the HCERES-abolition provision. The bill was definitively adopted on 15 April 2026 and enacted as Law No. 2026-403 of 26 May 2026, published in the Journal officiel on 27 May 2026 — without the abolition clause. HCERES therefore remains in operation under its existing statutory basis. Given how contested this was, institutions and partners relying on HCERES evaluations should expect continued scrutiny of its role and possible future reform proposals, even though abolition did not occur in this legislative round.
Why HCERES Matters Outside France
For research administrators, partner institutions, and funders outside France, HCERES is relevant in a few concrete ways. Its institutional and research-unit reports are the standard public reference for understanding how a French university or laboratory has been formally assessed — useful due diligence before entering a partnership, co-supervision agreement, or joint funding arrangement. Its evaluation of degree programs is relevant to recognizing and comparing French qualifications for student mobility and credential evaluation. And as a national evaluation authority operating within the European Higher Education Area, HCERES’s work sits alongside comparable national bodies elsewhere (for example, the UK’s Research Excellence Framework for research assessment) as part of the wider landscape of national research-assessment systems that CASRAI’s Research Evaluation Framework guide surveys. Readers tracking the broader reform movement around how research is assessed — away from journal-level metrics and toward more holistic, multidimensional criteria — may also find CASRAI’s coverage of DORA and CoARA useful context, though HCERES itself is a statutory national evaluator rather than a voluntary signatory framework.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does HCERES stand for?
HCERES stands for Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur — in English, the High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education.
Is HCERES a government ministry or an independent body?
HCERES is an independent administrative authority (autorité administrative indépendante). It is publicly funded and operates within the French state system, but its statutory independence is intended to keep its individual evaluations free from direction by the ministry or the institutions it evaluates.
What did HCERES replace?
HCERES replaced AERES (Agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur), effective 17 November 2014, following the 2013 law that created it.
Does HCERES evaluate every French university?
HCERES’s mandate covers public higher-education institutions and their groupings, public research organizations, research units, and accredited degree programs; private institutions fall within its scope only with respect to activity funded by public research or higher-education money.
Was HCERES abolished?
No. The French National Assembly voted in 2025 to include HCERES’s abolition in a broader economic-simplification bill, but the joint parliamentary committee removed that provision in January 2026, and the law as finally enacted (Law No. 2026-403 of 26 May 2026) did not abolish HCERES. It remains operational under its existing statutory basis.
How does HCERES relate to bibliometrics and research-assessment metrics?
HCERES incorporates the Observatoire des sciences et techniques (OST), which has produced bibliometric and science-indicator analysis since 1990, and HCERES evaluation reports draw on quantitative indicators alongside qualitative review. This places it within the broader landscape of research-assessment methodology that CASRAI covers in its CoARA and DORA dictionary entries and related bibliometrics content, though HCERES itself is a statutory evaluator rather than a metrics-reform initiative.
