Les doctorant·es ne sont pas à l’abri : les inégalités face à la précarité économique pendant la thèse
Abstract
The research presented in this article aims to describe the determinants of variations in the risks of exposure to economic insecurity for a particular category of students: doctoral students. As they no longer enjoy the protection afforded to younger students, and not yet the protection associated with stable employment, they are likely to experience significant financial difficulties during the course of their thesis. Our analyses are based on administrative data provided by all doctoral students registered at the Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA) over the last six years (2017-2023). They show that while the proportion of doctoral students without funding is lower in this university than at the national level, significant inequalities can be observed: lack of funding is much more common in the fourth year of the thesis on than during the first three, among doctoral students in humanities and social sciences than among those in science and technology, and among foreign doctoral students (in particular, from African and Asian countries) than among French doctoral students. The logistic regression modelling also shows that, all other things being equal, the two years of the Covid-19 crisis (2019-2020 and 2020-2021) were marked by a sharp decline in funding, which has not yet been fully absorbed in the science and technology disciplines.
