Doctoral Credits (DC)
Doctoral Credits (DC) measure the workload required of a PhD student to achieve their degree. It is organized in research, training, and teaching activities. Each DC represents 25 hours of work, and the PhD student must earn 60 DC per year. Each PhD program allocates the total DC in research, training and teaching activities, ensuring that research accounts for 65% to 80% of the total. The PhD program in Oncology, Hematology and Pathology allocated 80% of credits to research activities (Table A).
The program defines the minimum number of DC to be earned in the following areas:
- Disciplinary and multidisciplinary training
- Training related to the acquisition of transferable skills
- Extracurricular training for the professional growth of PhD students as members of the scientific community (e.g., summer schools, PhD symposia)
- Dissemination of research results
- Teaching and tutoring
This is detailed in Table B. The PhD program establishes its own criteria for determining the number of DC to assign to specific activities, consistent with its disciplinary practices and university guidelines. It also specifies the recommended number of DC for training, dissemination, and teaching to be achieved annually, ensuring a balanced distribution of these activities relative to research (Table C).
PhD students, in agreement with their supervisors and co-supervisors, define flexible, specific training and research paths, selecting activities by type and quantity while respecting the program's constraints for each activity and year of study. The correspondence between activity effort and DC earned is detailed in Table D.
The acquisition of DC is verified during the annual progress evaluation, following rules and procedures set by the PhD program.