In France, various types of institution have the term "University" in their name. These include the public universities, which are the autonomous institutions that are distinguished as being state institutes of higher education and research that practice open admissions, and that are designated with the label "Université" by the French ministry of Higher Education and Research.[2] These also include the communities of universities and institutions (COMUEs), which are degree-granting federated groups of universities and other institutes of higher education. The COMUEs replace the earlier Pôles de recherche et d'enseignement supérieur (PRES), which were groupings of universities and institutes of higher education that existed from 2007 to 2013. As opposed to the PRES, the COMUEs can grant degrees in their own names.
^French public universities in some cities are commonly spoken of as being multiple campuses of a larger city university system. For instance, the University of Paris system is said to be composed of 13 campuses, Paris I through Paris XIII, and this was the case in 1970. However, this view no longer reflects the reality as of 2007, which is of largely autonomous universities that fall under the academies in ways that do not necessarily respect the old groupings. To take the Paris example, three universities that bear the University of Paris name, Paris VIII, Paris XII, and Paris XIII, are in fact in the Academy of Créteil, and two others, Paris X and Paris XI, are in the Academy of Versailles, whereas the University of Marne la Vallée, which does not have a University of Paris campus number, is governed by the Academy of Paris.
