Collaboration Brings Google to French Business School Google has announced the first formal teaching collaboration between the company and a business school - a link between the Silicon Valley Internet giant and students in France. HEC, one of the top French business schools, and Google France made the announcement in Paris last week. "Google can help us to train students to become entrepreneurs in digital business," said Bernard Ramanantsoa, the director general of HEC. The collaboration is titled Google@HEC, but it will actually be a series of lectures, seminars and meetings for HEC students, taught by digital entrepreneurs and Google employees. The partnership is a first for the company, said Jean-Marc Tassetto, director general of Google France. "We are entering a new phase in transformation and cooperation," he said. Céline Lazorthes, an HEC graduate who now runs Leetchi.com, an online payment service with 15 employees, said that while digital business in France was blossoming, there was still much to learn from Silicon Valley. "All the advice they can give to a young e-entrepreneur can be helpful," she said. - CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE British applications decline after university fee increases The number of British university applications has fallen after an increase in tuition fees, but experts say the actual effect has been modest when the declining population of students of first-year university age is taken into account. Figures released last week by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service in Britain showed that applications across the country had fallen 8.7 percent from last year, to 462,507 from 506,388, with the sharpest drop recorded in England, where applications fell 10 percent. In Scotland, where local students do not pay fees, there was a decline of 1.5 percent, while a 2 percent drop was recorded in Wales, where fees will be partly subsidized by the government. However, the application rate, which measures the percentage of a given age group applying for university, fell by only one percentage point among 18-year-olds, the single largest age group. Nicola Dandridge, the chief executive of Universities UK, a body representing British universities, said that the figures showed that the fee increase had had less of an impact than previously expected. "A number of commentators had been warning that the decision to increase the fee cap to up to £9,000 this year would deter large numbers of applicants," she said in an e-mail. The new cap is about $14,000. "This has not happened and this small dip is far less cataclysmic than some were predicting." - JONATHAN J. LI