[Optimizing French scientific and economic performance: the Cifre system of public-private partnership in doctoral research and Servier's contribution].

The European Union has set itself the daunting target of becoming the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010. Any hope of success against the United States and the Asian tiger economies lies in the quality of scientific and technological research. In France, postgraduate training has long labored under a deep academia/industry divide. Although the universities have introduced supervised 3 year doctoral courses along the lines of the English-speaking countries, they still produce too many postdocs with little experience or understanding of, and little taste for, the private sector. This ignores career realities: the public sector can offer employment to only half the postdocs it produces. The rest must fall back on positions in the private sector, in some cases with a sense of failure, ill suiting them to drive the intellectual economy forwards compared to their international competitors. To combat the divide and emphasize the quality of the research training available within industry, the public/private National Association for Technical Research (ANRT), acting on behalf of the Ministry of Research, created the Industrial Research Training Agreement (Cifre) scheme in 1981. Higher education laboratories and private companies combine to offer doctoral students the opportunity to undertake their 3 year course in a mixed public/private environment (the exact ratio is not defined but in the case of the Servier Research Group, an early and active participant in the scheme, at least one third of the course is spent in the private sector). The doctoral thesis is thereby transformed into a meaningful career qualification. Funded by the Ministry, with maintenance grants to the students and compensatory payments to the companies, the Cifre scheme, which is currently being expanded, has produced 12,000 postdocs personally and intellectually equipped for careers transiting seamlessly between the public and private sectors, to the enrichment of each.