French universities sound alarm over dangers of distance learning

French university teachers and directors have expressed concern over growing signs of psychological damage among their students, following the return to distance learning under the second Covid-19 lockdown.

Julie Groffe-Charrier is a lecturer in private law at the University Paris-Saclay in the south of the French capital where she normally teaches in lecture theatres to around 300 first-year students.

Since March, when the first Covid-19 lockdown was imposed, her students have only been physically present…