The French Higher Education System is presently undergoing one of the deepest transformations of its history. In the last few years, several major pieces of legislation, partly unconnected, have triggered a process of change that will alter the structure of the system, the relations among its various components as well as their internal organisation. Parallel to these structural changes, the higher education and research system has been building up a comprehensive evaluation apparatus.After a short account of the present state of higher education highlighting this paper will present the development of the methods and the institutions of evaluation over the last two decades.