The PhD via Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)
Have you carried out significant research work as part of your professional activity, but do not hold a doctoral degree?
Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL or VAE in French) can allow you to obtain a doctorate, without going through doctoral training, by formally recognizing your expertise and your scientific contributions.
What is RPL for the doctorate?
Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL or VAE in French) is a legal scheme that allows you to obtain all or part of a qualification — in this case, the doctorate — based on your professional experience and research work.
Unlike a doctorate completed through initial training or continuing education, RPL does not require you to have been a doctoral candidate at a doctoral school or to have carried out research work in a laboratory attached to that doctoral school.
As for any other PhD, the doctoral degree is awarded after the defence of a thesis or the presentation of a body of original scientific work carried out during your professional experience. This thesis or body of work may be individual or collective, already published or unpublished. Where the thesis or work results from a collective contribution, you will need to write and defend a dissertation enabling your personal contribution to be assessed.
For the defence, the examining panel assesses the quality and originality of your work, and your skills, applying the same requirements as for a doctorate completed through initial training or continuing education.
Who can benefit?
This scheme is aimed at professionals, particularly researchers working in company R&D centres without a doctorate, or experts in technical or scientific fields, who have:
- a significant research experience (at least 3 years), in the public or private sector;
- carried out original research that has contributed to advancing knowledge in their field (through publications, patents, reports, innovations, etc.);
- a Master's degree or a level of education equivalent to a Master's degree.
The steps involved
To be eligible, you must have significant professional research experience and be able to demonstrate the correspondence between your professional and personal achievements and the skills expected of PhD holders.
Depending on the institution, the point of entry may be the doctoral school closest to your specialism, the doctoral college, or the department responsible for RPL within the institution.
The process usually takes place in 5 stages:
- Information and advice,
- Eligibility assessment: the aim is to check that you meet the administrative conditions for obtaining a doctorate via RPL,
- Enrolment and support for putting together the RPL application and for writing the thesis or dissertation presenting the research work carried out, enabling its originality, quality, position within the international scientific context and your personal contribution to be assessed,
- Official submission of the application and its assessment by two examiners proposed by the doctoral school,
- Defence before an examining panel.
In the event of partial validation, the panel members may specify, in more or less detail, the actions to be taken to obtain full certification.
Fees for the doctoral RPL are set by the institution's board of directors and may therefore vary from one institution to another. They include enrolment fees, support fees, and examination and graduation fees.