UTC today has matric­u­lat­ed some 330 PhD stu­dents, 60% of whom are non-French nation­als and awards between 60 and 80 PhD diplo­mas each aca­d­e­m­ic year. The pol­i­cy aim of the uni­ver­si­ty is to strength­en this pool of PhD stu­dents and to increase the num­ber of its grad­u­ate engi­neers who choose to pur­sue HE stud­ies with a doc­tor­ate, whether it be at UTC-Com­pieg­ne or at anoth­er uni­ver­si­ty. In a knowl­edge-based and increas­ing­ly glob­alised econ­o­my, faced with some major chal­lenges (cli­mate change, deple­tion of nat­ur­al resources, etc.), research and inno­va­tion have become an unavoid­able dri­ving force to cre­ate added val­ue. In this con­text, PhD stu­dents and grad­u­ates are (and will con­tin­ue to be) key players. 

“PhD stu­dents rep­re­sent the main dri­ving force in aca­d­e­m­ic lab­o­ra­to­ries”, under­lines Dr. Bruno Bachi­mont, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Research at UTC. “They alone, prac­ti­cal­ly, are in a posi­tion to com­mit them­selves 100% to research activ­i­ties and to car­ry out long and in-depth inves­ti­ga­tions. In every uni­ver­si­ty of tech­nol­o­gy that has engaged strong­ly in research activ­i­ties, the PhD student’s rep­re­sent at least 20% of the institution’s stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. At UTC, cur­rent­ly the fig­ure is less than 10% hence the impor­tance for us at UTC to rein­force our research capacity”. 

An increasingly valuable passport for enterprise

Once a PhD stu­dent grad­u­ates, he/she dis­cov­ers that job open­ings and oppor­tu­ni­ties in uni­ver­si­ty and pub­lic research lab­o­ra­to­ries are lim­it­ed, but not neg­li­gi­ble, and in France and else­where in the OECD coun­tries, it often takes sev­er­al years before a sta­ble, tenured posi­tion is secured. But the impor­tance now of inno­va­tion should encour­age enter­pris­es to open their premis­es to more and more PhD recruits, in par­tic­u­lar recruit­ing spe­cial­ists in engi­neer­ing sci­ences. “If you want to inno­vate, you must be able to iden­ti­fy and imple­ment orig­i­nal solu­tions to as yet unsolved prob­lems by mobi­liz­ing your knowl­edge, know-how and with off-the-shelf tools,” explains Prof. Olivi­er Gapenne, Cog­ni­tive Science/Psychology and Head of the Doc­tor­al School at UTC. “This state­ment in fact sum­maris­es quite well the train­ing engi­neers receive. But again, the PhDs must increas­ing be able to address prob­lems where exist­ing solutions/tools are inad­e­quate and there­fore new tools and new knowl­edge are need­ed. This is an area of skills that PhD stu­dent acquire when they work in research activities”. 

In the opin­ion of experts, in France where the pres­tige attached to the engi­neer­ing schools’ diplo­mas masked the inter­est of going for the university’s high­est degree, viz., the PhD, things are now begin­ning to change. “Increas­ing­ly, the major indus­tri­al groups are rec­og­niz­ing the spe­cif­ic skills of PhD grad­u­ates and request­ing their input”, notes Vin­cent Mignotte, direc­tor of the l’Association Bernard Gre­go­ry (ABG), a struc­ture for over 40 years now has been assist­ing the world of PhDs to move clos­er to that of the entre­pre­neur­ial world. “What is new here is that SMEs are also recruit­ing PhDs and very often these small com­pa­nies are faced with inno­va­tion chal­lenges in a world where ruth­less com­pe­ti­tion rules and they need staff capa­ble of ‘think­ing diag­o­nal­ly and not tra­di­tion­al­ly. Today most the­sis offers and job open­ings we post on our web-site come from the’ SMEs. The major Groups, who were our main­stay cus­tomers 15 years ago, now for­ward their requests direct­ly to the ‘doc­tor­al schools’”. 

This obser­va­tion is also shared by Clé­mence Chardon, Head of the recruit­ment ser­vice of Adoc’ Tal­ent Man­age­ment, an agency that spe­cialis­es in recruit­ing PhDs. “An increas­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies are recruit­ing PhDs today. Those that con­tact us are most­ly SMEs or start-ups and their busi­ness lies main­ly in advanced sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal areas, such as aero­nau­tics, biotech­nolo­gies, data sciences …”. 

More­over, a dis­tinc­tion to be made with engi­neer­ing diplo­mas, some of which are not recog­nised else­where, is that the doc­tor­al PhD degree is accept­ed round the world. It rep­re­sents a pre­cious pass­port for a high lev­el inter­na­tion­al career. “In some coun­ties, it seems ludi­crous to entrust a man­age­r­i­al post to some­one with­out a PhD, even if the per­son has been award­ed a pres­ti­gious engi­neer­ing diplo­ma”, says Vin­cent Mignotte. “This is one rea­son why French multi­na­tion­al groups are recruit­ing more and more PhDs”. 

Initiating future engineers to research activities

The trends we observe ben­e­fit espe­cial­ly to PhDs who already have an engi­neer­ing degree. For exam­ple, we find those who were recruit­ed in the con­text of the “Young PhD incen­tive” where a tax relief (reformed in 2008) was con­ced­ed to com­pa­nies that recruit­ed a fresh­ly grad­u­at­ed PhD to a researcher post on a no-time lim­it con­tract basis*.

Today, only 4% of grad­u­ate engi­neers from UTC pur­sue doc­tor­al stud­ies at UTC. In order to increase this frac­tion, our Uni­ver­si­ty is con­sid­er­ing an action plan to make UTC stu­dents more aware of the research world as and when they start their engi­neer­ing cours­es – for exam­ple, giv­ing them some small research projects or encour­ag­ing them to do one of their one-semes­ter place­ments in a research lab­o­ra­to­ry (inter­nal or exter­nal). “The chal­lenge”, under­lines Olivi­er Gapenne, “is to fore­arm the stu­dents who do not pur­sue their stud­ies beyond their engi­neer­ing diplo­ma. As the sit­u­a­tion evolves, it is impor­tant toady to have them under­stand that the pro­fes­sions of research sci­en­tist and engi­neers are nat­u­ral­ly dif­fer­ent but not con­tra­dic­to­ry, nor exclu­sive one form the oth­er. And if the engi­neers are work­ing on a project with a com­pa­ny, it is in their inter­est to put them­selves in the posi­tion of a research sci­en­tist, if only to be able to dis­cuss mat­ters with the PhD col­leagues (or oth­er aca­d­e­mics) and to become involved them­selves in the process of advanc­ing our knowledge-base”. 

In order to attract more PhD stu­dents, includ­ing can­di­dates from oth­er HE insti­tu­tions an d to pro­vide a bet­ter vis­i­bil­i­ty for recruit­ing offi­cers as to high qual­i­ty of train­ing these PhD stu­dents will receive, the Uni­ver­si­ty has also imple­ment­ed a qual­i­ty pol­i­cy pro­gramme over the past few years in regard to its PhD degree award, putting it on a par with the UTC engi­neer­ing diplo­ma. As is the case for oth­er doc­tor­al schools, UTC’s school for exam­ple has set up train­ing mod­ules that are design to rein­force the ‘employ­a­bil­i­ty fac­tor’ of its PhD grad­u­ates. The objec­tive notably is to pro­vide a clear insight into the entre­pre­neur­ial world, but this now a stan­dard approach. Where UTC proves orig­i­nal is that we try to make them aware of the need – whilst being experts in their spe­cial­ist fields – to build up and pos­sess a sol­id sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal cul­ture in their specialty.

“Whether they move towards the entre­pre­neur­ial world or to the pub­lic research sec­tor, most of our grad­u­ates are not in fact recruit­ed in their the­sis spe­cial­ty, but into a nonethe­less close area of exper­tise”, explains Bruno Bachi­mont. “They must there­fore show their capac­i­ty to adapt rapid­ly to new sub­jects. More­over, they will be increas­ing­ly expose to com­plex prob­lems for which no sin­gle approach proves sat­is­fac­to­ry. Last point here: pri­vate com­pa­nies need experts to find solu­tions for spe­cif­ic tech­no­log­i­cal obsta­cles, but they also need ‘vision­ar­ies’ capa­ble of antic­i­pat­ing changes in their spe­cial­ist areas and to enhance inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts and process­es. In oth­er words, as far as PhDs are con­cerned more pro­fes­sion­al­ism means more science”. 

Zero unemployed among UTC’s younger PhDs

The high qual­i­ty pol­i­cy thrust of UTC also calls for val­ori­sa­tion of its PhDs. This is embod­ies in the Guy Deniélou Prize, the most recent edi­tion of which took place on April 7, 2017. Every year, this Prize sheds light on the work of its younger research sci­en­tists pop­u­la­tion, select­ing 4 recent grad­u­ates whose achieve­ment were of spe­cial inter­est to a jury of experts. 

As you read the expe­ri­ences of these UTC PhDs in the next few pages, you will no doubt agree that the qual­i­ty of their work deserves the recog­ni­tion they get else­where: most of them were recruit­ed very rapid­ly, often before they have made their pub­lic the­sis pre­sen­ta­tion and this is con­firmed by our polling enquiries. Glob­al­ly speak­ing, the grad­u­ates, over the years 2010–2015, took between 2 to 3 months to secure their first job and it was not­ed, 3 years after grad­u­a­tion, that none of the PhD grad­u­ates (for years 2010, 2011 and 2012) was unem­ployed. 46% are cur­rent­ly employed in pub­lic ser­vice posi­tions, 46% in the pri­vate sec­tors, the major­i­ty as lec­tur­er-research sci­en­tists, research work­ers (as sci­en­tists or engi­neers) and all enjoy a sta­ble job posi­tion. n 

[Min­is­te­r­i­al assess­ment of the impact of the “Young PhD » incen­tive in the Government’s tax rebate pro­gramme — Report to the French Min­istry in charge of HE and Research (MENESR), Octo­ber 1915].

Professional prospects for PhDs in France

A clear-cut added value of the PhD with respect to the Master’s degree 2.

France awards around 14 000 PhDs per year, 40% of whom are non-French nation­als. The most recent enquiry of the CEREQ (French nation­al agency for analy­sis of qual­i­fi­ca­tions) look­ing at the 3 year hori­zon mark of French nation­al PhDs liv­ing in France, par­tic­u­lar­ly the 2010 grad­u­ates (not includ­ing the health sector). 

In 2013, the unem­ploy­ment lev­el, inde­pen­dent­ly of the spe­cial­ist area, was still rel­a­tive­ly high: 9%. Nev­er­the­less, it has dropped by 2 % over the decade. And of spe­cial note, the lev­el is now below that of the Master’s 2 degree, around 12% since 2010 but only 7% in 2007. 

In con­trast, how­ev­er, it is high­er than the com­pa­ra­ble fig­ures for grad­u­ates from the engi­neer­ing schools (4%). How­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion is high­ly con­trast­ed depend­ing on the spe­cial­ty of the PhDs. 

Advantage in computer sciences and applications, electronics and engineering sciences

PhDs in in com­put­er sci­ences and appli­ca­tions, elec­tron­ics and engi­neer­ing sci­ences are those for whom the access to a first job is short­est in lead-time and who – 3 years after their grad­u­a­tion — have the low­est unem­ploy­ment rate and the less employed under CDD (time lim­it­ed) con­tracts. The frac­tion of those who are unem­ployed or under CDD con­tracts is high­er than those with an engi­neer­ing diplo­ma but this can be explained by the dif­fi­cul­ties inher­ent to secur­ing a job in pub­lic research (for those who have cho­sen this career path). But they are almost all con­sid­ered as being at man­age­ment lev­el and in terms of their medi­an salaries can vie with the engineers. 

 Engineering diploma + PhD – the winning hand

PhD grad­u­ates who also hold an engi­neer­ing diplo­ma can access the employ­ment mar­kets eas­i­er than PhDs in the same spe­cial­ty field but with­out an engi­neer­ing degree. In 2013, three years after grad­u­at­ing, only 5% of the dou­ble degree cat­e­go­ry were still unem­ployed and 17% were engaged under time lim­it­ed con­tracts (CDD). In the sec­ond sin­gle degree cat­e­go­ry, 12% were unem­ployed and 40% under time lim­it­ed contracts. 

 Sources :

• 3 year Job hori­zon for PhD grad­u­at­ing in 2010 – Enquiry for Gen­er­a­tion 2010, inter­ro­ga­tion for 2013, CEREQ, Dec. 2015. 

• Sci­en­tif­ic employ­ment sta­tus in France – joint report 2016. HE and Research Direc­torate Gen­er­al, Research and Inno­va­tion Direc­torate General.