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Thirty years passed between the birth of the first general student associations ( Associations générales d’étudiants or AGEs) and their merger into one national union in 1907. The desire of French students to be represented on the international level led to the creation of this organization, with the support of academic authorities. From the start, however, UNEF did not include every general student association; the Paris AGE, for example, joined at a later date. Yet, it was the presence alongside UNEF of corporatist organizations defending the interests of university departments (facultés) that made it into a more assertive organization.