All these figures can be found in [4].

1 - PhD Researchers Repartition

There are currently 66 000 PhD students in France, and it is admitted that 40% will not finish their thesis. Between 10 000 and 11 000 thesis are defended each year (rounded average on 1996, 1997 and 1998 figures):

40.3% of doctors are women (more than 50% in Biology and Human Science, less than 30% in Physics or Maths and Computer Science).

One doctor out of 4 is a foreigner, 30% coming from North Africa, and 14.5% from Europe.

2 - Financial Supports for PhD Students

63% of PhD students have a financial support dedicated to their PhD preparation.

• Wages

The most common source of money is a 3 years work contract with the french Ministry of Research. This allocation, as it is called, amounts to 6000FF (915 euros) per month. 4000 allocations will be granted next september. Research institutions (CNRS, ... [3]) can also offer three years positions to young researchers. The wages are generally a bit higher than the allocation, thanks to co-funding involving a company or a region. Regions funds some PhD researchers too, more or less at the allocation level.

These incomes can be increased by ``monitorat''. It is a three year position reserved to already funded PhD students, consisting in 64 hours teaching at university per year, paid 1800FF (275 euros) per month and a serie of teaching training . 1200 "monitorats" are granted each year.

At last, firms can also finance PhD students directly or through a sytem called CIFRE: a business company hires a PhD student for 3 years and receives some money back from the french governement. The wages depend on the company, but cannot be under 8900 FF (1360 euros) per month.

All these financial supports include affiliation to the social security system and right to unemployment benefits after the PhD is over, because they are based on work contracts. Taxes have to be paid on these incomes.

• Fellowships, Grants

PhD students can also get financial support from associations or companies offering grants. They do not have to pay taxes, but have to pay the student social insurance to have health support, and they cannot pretend to unemployment help once their PhD is over.

• No Funding at All

27% of PhD researchers do not have specific funding. Some of them have a permanent job while they are working on their PhD (case of high school teachers for instance). It is also possible to teach at the university, but this is too a casual job for a decent income. Family's help, part time job or casual jobs are the backup solutions for young researchers who want to achieve a PhD without a dedicated financing source. But research is a full time job and therefore, we believe this job should be paid for what it is worth.

The funded thesis rate depends on the field. Human Sciences or Society Sciences have far more non funded PhD students than "Hard Science", mostly due to the lack of fundings other than the allocation. A funded thesis has also far mor chances to be achieved than a non-funded one.

One of the first doctoral organization was called ''Etudiants et Recherche'' (Students and Research), in the late 80's. There was a revival of the doctoral movement in 1995 which was set up thanks to the Internet. This lead to a cooperative report writing, dealing with the doctoral training problems [7,6] and to the most usefull resource for PhD students: the ``Guilde des Doctorants'' website [8]. At the same time, the Confédération des Etudiants Chercheurs [10] was born, aiming at representing all PhD students at a national (and now international) level.

Nowadays, there are around a hundred PhD students organisations In France listed on the Guilde's website [9].

III - WHAT TO DO AFTER A PhD ?

Until recently, the natural future of a doctor was either to enter a french research institution, CNRS, INRA, ..., or to become a "teacher-researcher" at the University. But only 30% of the doctors may find their place there, due to the number of offered positions compared with the number of doctors. That is partly why Doctoral Schools had to be set up: more and more young researchers have to find a job outside the academic sector but they are not prepared to.

One year and a half after they have defended their thesis, 27% of doctors have a tenure position in a university or a research institution, 25% work in business companies, 26% are in postdoc, 6.7% teach in high school and 6.3% work in administrationsd. 5% are unemployed. There are still variations depending on the subjects: more than 45% doctors in biology are in postdoc, but less than 11% in society sciences. 35% of chemists work in companies. 27% of human sciences doctors teach in high schools.

The postdocs' situation is hard to study. Once a person has left the country, it becomes harder to know what he or she is doing. But it seems like there is a waste of money in training high level researchers who go abroad and do not come back [11,5].

The young doctors come also accross the difficulty of entering business companies. Doctorate is often seen as an academic diploma and doctors are not considered interesting candidates in spite of (or because of ?) their high level training. This is mostly due to the french training system : on one hand, there are universities supposed to provide academic training and on the other hand, there are french ''High Scools'', supposedly training future graduates for business companies. Things are slowly changing, thanks to the efforts made by several organisations such as Association Bernard Grégory [12] and by the french governments, and also thanks to the recent changes in the economic situation.

CONCLUSION

This description shows that the situation is not yet perfect. PhD researchers are an important part of the research task force in France: almost one researchers out of two is a PhD student. Still, their real place in the french research system is not acknowledged: no funding, or low level funding compared with wages of same training workers in other sectors, poor working conditions,... Doctors' future is also a crucial issue and points out several dysfunctions in the french research system such as lack of forcasting in offered tenure positions or postdocs' difficulties. All the problems encoutered by young scientists have been described in 1995 [7,6]... Improvements such as ''Charte des thèses'' have been obtained but there is still more to do.