Student protests over crumbling schools despite billions in public spending are fueling a broader crisis in France, as experts warn that the country's mounting financial troubles, President Emmanuel Macron's weakened political center and radical movements are pushing the unrest far beyond its original educational grievances.

Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' senior envoy for Europe, told Fox News Digital in an interview from Paris that what began in September with legitimate complaints about school conditions has increasingly been exploited by political forces seeking confrontation with the state.

"Overall I'd say the anger is real but the violence I would say is organized," she said, adding that destroying schools would do nothing to improve the education system.

Seventy-two percent of education expenditure went toward salaries, social contributions and pensions for teaching and non-teaching personnel, while just 8.5% went toward investment, including infrastructure and equipment. The figures cover the entire education system, not just high schools, according to French public debt stood at 117.6% of GDP in the first quarter of 2026, the third-highest ratio in the European Union, behind Greece and Italy.

For Feigenbaum, the long-term roots of the crisis lie in Macron's political legacy.

When Macron won the presidency in 2017, he promised to move beyond France's traditional left-right divide, combining policies from both sides into a new centrist political movement.

But Feigenbaum argues that the strategy produced an unintended consequence: weakening France's established moderate parties without creating a durable governing coalition to replace them.

"What he ended up doing was attracting the moderate voters from the parties of the moderate left and the parties from the moderate right, and essentially destroyed those parties," Feigenbaum said.

He argued that the collapse of the traditional political center helped create space for more ideologically polarized movements. "Macron is a smart man, but he's a terrible politician," the professor added.

Macron's controversial pension reforms illustrate the difficulty of persuading French voters to accept reductions in longstanding public benefits, Feigenbaum argued. Those efforts triggered widespread protests, while implementation of the 2023 retirement changes has since been suspended until 2028.

The situation became especially difficult after Macron called snap parliamentary elections in 2024, producing a deeply divided National Assembly without a governing majority.

"Even if the government wanted to do something coherent, they simply don't have the votes to do it," Feigenbaum said.

That paralysis has left Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu handling the immediate unrest while Macron faces questions about the stability of the political system he helped reshape.

The protests began in the Paris suburbs in September amid complaints about overcrowded classrooms, inadequate heating and cooling, aging buildings and teachers who were not replaced when absent.

Rodan-Benzaquen said the anger reflected years of educational instability, frequent ministerial changes and reforms that have failed to resolve persistent school problems.

She also pointed to a broader sense of anxiety among young people about their economic future, artificial intelligence, climate change and international conflicts.

According to theFrance's hard-left La France Insoumise party, known as LFI, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, became an increasingly contentious issue.

The demonstrations have also raised questions about whether Islamist groups and pro-Palestinian activists are seeking to use the unrest to advance broader ideological causes.

Rodan-Benzaquen argued that Mélenchon's emphasis on Gaza and the Palestinian cause has helped bring together political constituencies that might otherwise have little in common.

"It's sort of the idea of sort of an intersection of different movements where they manage to bring together the different groups, the far left, Islamist movements, pro-Palestinian activists," she said.

She pointed to Palestinian flags appearing during the demonstrations as an indication of how the movement has expanded beyond its original educational demands.

The FDD expert argued that Islamist elements were attempting to capitalize on the turmoil, although she cautioned against reducing the entire crisis to immigration or religion.

"But this goes far beyond the issue of immigration, it goes far beyond the issue of Islamism, it goes far beyond the issue of Islam," she said.

The government's latest concessions have not ended the protests.

According tobroken classrooms has become a test of whether France can reconcile its costly promises with its financial reality before the divisions consuming its schools deepen further.