A true intellectual journey, the doctorate can also, due to the precariousness it entails, become a veritable daily obstacle course, lastingly weakening young researchers both psychologically and economically. A look back at the lessons learned from a survey of 15 career paths in the humanities and social sciences.

With Le Vacataire , published in 2025, economist Thomas Porcher shone a spotlight on the precariousness of these non-civil servant teachers. Often doctoral students or young doctors, they are paid by the hour of class, have no access to social security benefits, and their salary can be paid several months after their intervention.

These temporary staff now represent nearly two-thirds of the people teaching at French universities, estimates Thomas Porcher. But this precariousness doesn’t begin with temporary work: it begins with the thesis. In France, a doctorate lasts on average four to six years in the humanities and social sciences, with the goal of producing new knowledge. In these disciplines, some doctoral students obtain a doctoral contract or a grant, but this remains a minority: many of them must work alongside their research to support themselves.

Many temporary staff are still doctoral students, and the poorly paid hours add to an overload of work (manuscripts to write, course preparation, publications to produce), a lack of recognition (little institutional recognition, poor integration into research teams) and a strong sense of loneliness. Far from being an exception, these temporary positions are part of a larger system of weakening of the academic world, which forces many doctoral students to make invisible sacrifices simply to stay in the race.

Alongside my work as a temporary teaching and research associate (Ater), I conducted a survey of 15 young, recently graduated doctors in the humanities and social sciences. Their stories tell less of an academic success story than a journey marked by uncertainty, renunciation, and exhaustion. Several mention postponed personal projects, prolonged isolation, or a feeling of emptiness after their thesis defense. These testimonies raise a question: what does the doctorate tell us about the way the university trains, supervises, and sometimes weakens its future researchers?

A life put on hold

Everyone knows that writing a thesis is difficult . But often, we imagine that this difficulty will be primarily intellectual. However, in the 15 stories I collected, no one complains about excessive intellectual demands. The difficulties lie elsewhere. The renunciations are personal.

Clotilde completed her entire thesis without funding: she worked as a  nanny  , then took on temporary work throughout her doctoral studies. She postponed plans to have a child and lived in constant uncertainty about her financial resources: she didn’t know if she would be able to support herself in the following months, as she puts it: “I put my life on hold.”

Alice, for her part, voluntarily isolated herself to stay focused, locking herself away for days in temporary accommodation to write, to the point of cutting off her social ties. Amandine speaks of a saturated schedule: “There were seventy hours a week or more devoted to work, so after that, I ate, I slept.”

Another interviewee spoke of a period of constant tension between work and personal life: “I was driving two and a half hours, morning and evening, to teach my classes while having two children to manage. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t give up.”

These testimonies show that a doctorate isn’t just an overload of work. It’s a constant pressure that gradually erases what makes up life around work: projects, relationships, self-care. And this erasure is further exacerbated when economic conditions are precarious. Not all of the people interviewed experienced the same financial stability, but for many, the lack of resources reinforced the constant tension: it made each choice more difficult. One survey participant recounted:

“Financially, it was very hard. That’s also why I thought about quitting. I say it’s because of my supervisor, but it’s because of… I was putting pressure on my supervisor to finish this thesis quickly because it lasted a long time and I needed to earn money, actually. And it wasn’t the part-time jobs at the university that were earning me a normal salary.”

Another mentions the pressure added to that of everyday life:

“My family would say to me, ‘When are you going to start working?’ because you have to bring in money. So, there was also that notion that added an extra burden.”

The doctorate becomes a space of total fragility, where material uncertainty fuels mental wear and tear and self-effacement.

Continuous mental mobilization

The stories collected rarely mention burnout in the clinical sense. But all speak of a consensual psychological tension: extreme fatigue, intrusive thoughts, guilt at never doing enough.

Amandine describes this mental spiral with lucidity: “It’s that I was constantly thinking about what I had to do, what I hadn’t done. It’s something that never leaves you.”

In Sebastian, this pressure translates into an omnipresent guilt:

“At first, I felt very guilty. Then, there was a time when I sometimes felt guilty about going to the movies or watching Friends . And, of course, the feeling of guilt will structure your entire state of mind when you’re doing your thesis.”

Jean, for his part, speaks of intrusive thoughts that continue well beyond the end of the thesis: “For a year, I still had intrusive thoughts about the thesis. Like: ‘You have to work on your thesis.’ Even though it was finished.”

Another testimony shows how this pressure slides into an acute, almost bodily anxiety:

“During the time I was writing my thesis, I had more and more moments of panic. From time to time, I felt anxiety attacks rising.”

These forms of fragility are not isolated. They reflect a system that demands constant mental mobilization, with no right to relax. For many, it’s after the defense that the body gives way. When the pressure finally eases, emptiness sets in. One recounts:

“I broke the glass ceiling, but I’m still removing the pieces that are stuck in my skin.”

Concentration problems, chronic fatigue, loss of momentum: the thesis doesn’t end with the manuscript. It continues in the body, memory, and silence.

And after so many sacrifices, what’s left? Some have landed a job, others are stuck with precarious contracts. But some have given up; they no longer want to be part of the academic world. These stories speak to the fatigue of a system that exhausts its own researchers before they even begin their careers.

Author Bio: Faustine Rousselot is Doctor of Education and Training Sciences at the University of Lille