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What is the CJC ?

The Confédération des Jeunes Chercheurs (CJC, Young Researchers Confederation) is a French not-for-profit organisation, born on March 2nd 1996 in order to improve the situation of young researchers in France. Difficulties to find a job after the PhD was a major concern. Yet, as time went by, other subjects of interest have arisen, such as defining a unified statute for PhDs in France.

The CJC is a national structure whose members are local PhD organisations, and also a few individuals. It aims at representing young researchers (PhD, but also postdocs) at a national level. For that purpose, CJC can make suggestions on all topics concerning doctoral studies, the French research system, the higher education system, ...

If you want to know more about the situation of French PhDs in the years 2000-2001, you can read "Doctoral Studies in France, a text written for presentation at the Eurodoc 2001 conference in Sweden, or read the article we wrote for Science's Next Wave as part of the serie "The Eurodoc Exchange".

The Guilde des Doctorants website is also worth a visit. This site which gathers everything of interest concerning the PhD experience has international pages.

The CJC is a member of Eurodoc, the Council for Postgraduate Students and Junior Researchers in Europe.

How to contact us ?

Confédération des des Jeunes Chercheurs
Campus des Cordeliers
15 rue de l'école de médecine
75006 Paris
Mail :
Web : http://cjc.jeunes-chercheurs.org

Our actions

We cannot describe all the CJC has been doing since it was born, but here are some of its main actions :

• PhD charter : since 1998, each university must adopt a text that describes the role of each partner involved in a PhD : the student, his/her superviser, the director of the Research Team and the director of the Doctoral School. This text has no power in itself, but writing clearly what each one has to do is a great help in changing mentalities so that the PhDs situation can get better. No translation of the charter example given by the Ministry of Research is available, but those who want to know more (and can read french) should visit the PhD charter website : http://cdt.jeunes-chercheurs.org/

• Raise of young researchers salaries : at the end of 2000, the CJC decided to get a raise of the "research allocation", a 3 years fellowship granted by the Ministry of research to 25% of PhD candidates. The allocation amount had not changed since 1991, where it had been fixed to 7400FF (1128 euros, but after legal charges are deducted, 915 euros are really avalaible, before taxes). After one year of actions (13000 supports collected in 3 months, 2 demonstrations in Paris, ...), we get a 5.5% raise at the end of year 2001.

The CJC now deals with the Doctoral School issue. Since 2000, each PhD candidate has to be affiliated to a Doctoral School, a structure supposed to offer different trainings to its members during the PhD. Fields related courses or conferences are concerned, but also more general subjects such as learning a foreign language, or preparing the post-PhD time. Whats is expected from Doctoral Scools is not really clear, nor is their functionning way and the CJC has its word to say.

Our goal for the coming years is to define a unified statute for PhDs candidates. Wages, grants, or no financial support ? Three, five, ten years ? The current PhDs candidates' situations are too various and should be clarified.

The CJC was a member of PI-Net and is still in contact with the organisation.