After les grandes vacances, many business school directors and deans in France are returning to their desks this week with mergers to complete or contemplate.

While some schools are merging for strategic reasons, others may soon be forced by financial pressures to consider marriages of convenience. Many business schools in France receive millions of euros in subsidies from their local, publicly funded chambers of commerce. But as part of its austerity measures, the French government is putting the squeeze on chambers of commerce, which in turn could tighten the screw on the business schools they support.

“I’ve been in this sector for 30 years, working in three different schools with three different chambers of commerce, so I’ve heard this alarmist talk for 30 years,” says Philip McLaughlin, who was previously director of BEM Management School Bordeaux. “But austerity has made that talk louder.”