After 14 years of procedures and approval obtained on March 4, 2022, the UniLaSalle polytechnic institute, resulting from the merger of five engineering schools and located in Mont-Saint-Aignan, near Rouen (Seine-Maritime) opened in September 2022 its first class of veterinary students.
Friday February 16, what is now the fifth veterinary school in France, but the first private and associative, was officially inaugurated by Marc Fesneau, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty.
A consecration against a backdrop of shortage of veterinarians in France.
According to the 7th Demographic Atlas of the profession and the National Demographic Observatory of the profession, there were 2,700 missing in 2022.
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It is therefore to deal with the lack of training, to prevent more than half of the students from going abroad and “to fight against the shortage of veterinarians, particularly in rural areas and in the agri-food industry”, as recalled Valérie Leroux, the deputy general director of UniLasalle, that the establishment has obtained all authorizations from the Ministry of Agriculture and that of Higher Education.
“We receive 120 students per class,” says the director.
Our desire is to direct those who chose the clinical stream in 6th year towards productive animals.
But, from the first year, internships are compulsory on farms and livestock farms.
It’s a specificity of ours.
Our first graduates will graduate in 2028.”
“By then, confirms Valérie Leroux, we will have opened an anatomy center and a CHEV (Veterinary School Hospital Center) on 8,935 m2 to accommodate 720 students and 150 employees.
All for an investment of 34 million euros excluding land and parking.
» While ENVA in Maisons-Alfort, ENVT in Toulouse, Oniris in Nantes and VetAgro Sup in Lyon are public schools, “whose cost per student is 40,000 euros per year, at UniLaSalle, the charge is of 25,000 euros,” argues the deputy director.
Schooling has a cost for students, with tuition fees at Mont-Saint-Aignan amounting to 13,550 euros per year for the first three years, then 18,600 euros from the fourth to the sixth.
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“We are now one of the French veterinary schools,” rejoices Caroline Boulocher, director of veterinary innovation and development at UniLaSalle.
Our goal is not to compete with others but rather to prevent our students from going abroad.
It is a question of animal health sovereignty.
All our students come from a post-baccalaureate selection, 1,200 of them apply on Parcoursup and 500 are selected to take interviews with a teacher-researcher and a practicing veterinarian.
They can thus benefit from scholarships and agreements that we have with banks.
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This in no way slows down the vocations of the candidates, like Emma Banache.
At 19, Picardy “has wanted to become a veterinarian since she was little, to be close to animals and help owners.
I had the chance, she explains, to do internships very early on thanks to my family.
After my Bac SVT with a specialty in expert mathematics, I registered on Parcoursup qui chose notre vie.
I was lucky enough to be part of the first promotion and thus participate in the development of a new course.
As here, there is no skimming at the end of the year, we support each other.
After specializing in nutrition and focusing on ruminants, I will settle in Seine-Maritime.
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“Learning from mistakes made for humans”
Before officially cutting the tricolor ribbon, Marc Fesneau, the Minister of Agriculture, visited all the facilities and met first-year students.
Then, in the amphitheater, during the speeches, Sébastien Windsor, president of UniLaSalle but also of the Permanent Assembly of Chambers of Agriculture, welcomed “an exceptional phenomenon that the birth of this beautiful entirely associative school which must be an asset for local and national veterinarians and for breeders.
It will create, he assured, new relationships beyond client-supplier relationships, because the future of breeding is conditional on the presence of veterinarians and, conversely, especially in this period when the Livestock breeding is widely criticized, particularly on the issue of animal welfare.
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The minister, for his part, recalled that veterinary education was born in France under Louis in Paris.
“You are therefore authorized here to award the diploma of veterinary doctor, a public health professional.
All this contributes to an overall policy, because we have also strengthened the numbers of the other four schools.
By 2030, we will have trained 75% more veterinarians.
Perhaps we have learned lessons from what we have not done in human medical demography.
We will ensure that we benefit from 840 additional veterinarians per year.
I am very happy that UniLaSalle can contribute to this.
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