One number to contact all CROUSes

All audiences

Since early April, the Cnous has launched a new mechanism to make life easier for students: a single phone number, +339 72 59 65 65, to contact all contact centres in the Crous network. The decision, which is part of an overall modernisation policy, is to deal more quickly and efficiently with calls about student life: financial support, accommodation, food or social support.

The Cnous explained that implementing a single phone number is part of the Plan téléphone decided by the French government as part of the Services Publics+ programme, a national programme to improve the quality of services to users. It should be noted that in France, “the phone is still the most widely used canal to contact a public agent”.

A quality of services supposed to continue improving

The CROUSes make a network of 27 institutions divided all over the territory with a single goal: encouraging “the improvement of conditions of living of students in their everyday life to ensure the best chances of success” All CROUSes have thus been engaged for many years in the continued improvement of the quality of services available to students. They have already developed several tools to streamline processes such as the dematerialisation of contact points, the deployment of a national appointments platform for social services or the deployment of an “omnicanal tool” to answer students.

This is an improvement of the information systems that should streamline its use for both students and agents. Implementing a single call number (priced at local cost) rationalises even further processes and improves the driving of the network. These many qualitative improvements reveal the “major objectives of the network project” decided by the Cnous in November 2024.

Four regional call centres

Scholarships, accommodation, CVEC (Contribution to Campus and Student Life tax), social services, catering, request for emergency financial support and any other demand for general information will be answered with this single number.

And the Cnous added that students will just have to mention the number of the “département” they study in to be answered by the Crous contact centre they are regionally linked with. Four regional contact centres (Clermont-Ferrand, Rennes, Bordeaux and Strasbourg, excluding La Réunion and Mayotte) will be able to handle these calls and turn contact centres into “an additional tool to facilitate the processes of the students and improve the follow-up of their file”, said the President of the Cnous during the mechanism presentation.

The Crous’s University restaurants acclaimed

In all the services provided by the Crous, the university restaurants service is the service all students in France benefit from. And a recent report from the high council for families, childhood and aging (HCFEA in French) examined the state of university restaurants. The report points out that attendance of university restaurants keeps growing since the end of the health crisis and the implementation of the 1-euro meal initiative: 63.5% of the student population takes meals in a university restaurant.

However, the report also points out that part of the student population doesn’t have access to a university restaurant in the vicinity of their place of studies. And the ministry of higher education has just resolved the issue when it revealed a new support mechanism to student catering putting “territorial fairness at the heart of the mechanism”. The new support is designed to be “simple, automatic and dematerialised” to ensure access to food at a moderate price for all students. The new mechanism is directed to students located in “white areas”, a.k.a. places that don’t have a Crous restaurant in their vicinity.

For a more sustainable catering

During the last International Agriculture Fair, the Cnous and Inrae (the French institute for research in agriculture, food and the environment) concluded a five-year framework agreement) to “work hand in hand in favour for a food that is more sustainable and accessible to students”.

Parts of the convention also explained that the new partnership agreement aims at supporting innovation and research of university restaurants, and especially regarding “the offer of collective catering and strengthening of plants world in this offer”.

Work led in this framework agreement focus on “understanding the key components of a more sustainable offer”, but also the diversification of meals, supporting cooks in the changes of the food practice and, more broadly, raising awareness of students about more sustainable food.