[globuous]

In france, companies all pay quite a lot of money to some fund. The fund’s purpose is to finance employee education if they want to switch careers.

For instance, my friend was a mechanical engineer at Total, and after 3 years left to go study ML 1 year. Not only was the school all paid for by this fund, but the now student got a decent share of his salary everymonth. Best of best, he can go work for another company after his degree without any problem.

I thought that was a great idea. Although in practice, not every one is eligible to this particular program. I forgot how its called, CIFRE maybe

this particular degree isnt paid for by the government like the rest french education. Although it is taught at a very famous engineering school in france

[yoz-y]

The name got changed several times. CIFRE is a PhD course paid for by a company and subsidized by the state. So you get to do real work and get a PhD.

The thing you are thinking about is probably Compte Personnel de Formation (CPF) which was called Droit Individual à la Formation (DIF) a few years back.

Note that this is not some incredible sum of money, however a year in a classic STEM university costs a few hundred euros in France, so what you get from CPF is quite enough.

For five years of engineering school I spend about 3500 euros which included insurance. A full pension with private room costs a bit more than 300 euros per month. The difference with US education prices is just staggering.