Over the last two decades, the French doctorate has evolved significantly after the introduction of national policies defined by law in 2003. The most important change was the creation of about 250 doctoral schools, where students spend 3 to 4 years. At the same time, they are attached to an accredited research laboratory to do a thesis and become a researcher, and some of them, a lecturer. All of the steps of this process, ending in a viva, are codified by a single ministerial order of 2006, which was revised in 2016 and 2022. In this article, we present the main provisions of this text and expose the reasons for their introduction and their potential effects. The article also considers the consequences of the fact that the doctorate is no longer solely designed to provide universities and public research institutes with future professors and researchers.