Touraine completed his khâgne (preparatory school) at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, and entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1945. He left his studies at the ENS for a research trip in Hungary, and then worked at a mine in Valenciennes in 1947-1948 after his return to France. Touraine's work in the industrial milieu and his simultaneous discovery of the sociologist Georges Friedmann's "Problèmes humains du machinisme industriel" led him to return to studies in history at the ENS and to pass the "agrégation" in history in 1950.