France: A low‐fee, low aid system challenged from the margins Nicolas Charles Between marketization and social justice. A comparative approach to tuition fee policies in Western Europe and beyond in the series Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Abstract In France, the vast majority of programs are not free of charge, even though higher education programs are generally inexpensive. Student funding has long been characterized by low up‐front fees and limited support for students, aiming at ensuring social justice. Yet, the French system has partly failed to address inequalities of access to higher education and has recently been subject to the international movement towards cost‐sharing. Thus the status quo is relatively fragile. While national policy reforms do not propose new tuition fee instruments, some higher education institutions have recently renewed their practices, especially by implementing variable fees. These institution‐based instruments have not challenged so far the overall predominance of the French service public logic, where higher education is expected to be inexpensive and the cost of studies is to vary according to parental income. However cost‐sharing has nonetheless recently taken a major step in France, along with the State laissez‐faire in a context of economic crisis and subsequent decreasing public funding, and even though it may lead to increasing inequalities.