Imagine the chagrin of French universities whenever international rankings are published, reports the BBC.
The top places are invariably filled with the US and UK academic powerhouses. And then coming up fast are the ambitious Asian universities.
But what about the French, with their centuries of scholarship and ancient institutions? There was a university in Paris before Oxford or Cambridge.
French universities are conspicuous by their absence. In the most recent QS World University Rankings there were none in the top 20 and only two in the top 100.
That could all change from next year.
As part of a huge government-driven academic and economic project, there will be a new university called Paris-Saclay, with a campus south of the French capital. The project has initial funding of 7.5bn euros (£5.9bn) for an endowment, buildings and transport links.
The French government is bringing together 19 institutions into a single structure, with the aim of building a university of a size and scale that can compete with global giants like Harvard or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Dominique Vernay, the president of this new university, says that within a decade he wants Paris-Saclay to be among the top ranking world universities.
"My goal is to be a top 10 institution," he says. In Europe, he wants Paris-Saclay to be in the "top two or three".
In university rankings, big is beautiful, and the Paris-Saclay will have 70,000 students and 10,000 researchers. There will be an emphasis on graduate courses and recruiting more international students and staff.
The idea of bringing together individual colleges into a "federal university" has been borrowed from the UK.
"Our model isn't that far from the Oxbridge model," he says.