The Alliance wishes to engage in internal structuring work aimed at making the master’s-doctorate continuum more fluid. The objective is to develop mechanisms that organise, on the basis of areas of excellence in research, master’s and doctoral courses likely to promote the international attractiveness of the three institutions. In the long term, it is advisable to move towards the establishment of Graduate Schools corresponding to the structuring research themes defined within the framework of the site. This objective will be achieved by attaching ULCO and Université d’Artois doctoral students to the two UPJV doctoral schools (ED STS 585 and ED SHS 586), this changeover being facilitated by the standardisation, already in place, of the ADUM management tool. This connection will also involve managing the selection of candidates for doctoral grants at the site level. Since 2019, actions favouring the funding of doctoral grants involving co-financing from at least two Alliance institutions have been undertaken.

From the start of the 2020-2021 academic year, the University of Artois and ULCO will be co-accredited with the UPJV for their respective doctoral schools until 2024-2025. Moreover, from the last quarter of 2020, a change in governance will involve the appointment of members of ULCO and the University of Artois as correspondents of their respective institutions within the ED STS and SHS. During 2021, a doctoral college in charge of steering “soft skills” training and events will be set up.

The three institutions also want to deploy engineering courses throughout the site. At present, only ULCO has an integrated engineering school (EILCO). By relying on this school, the members of the Alliance wish to build new engineering courses. The University of Artois thus intends to capitalise on its strong points and to create, with EILCO, a course in Béthune on the “industry of the future” from 2021, then a course on “artificial intelligence”. The UPJV is working with EILCO to open four courses in Saint-Quentin and Amiens on the themes of energy and the eco-responsible city. In the longer term, the three institutions plan to develop together engineering courses which will be proposed for evaluation by the CTI.

In terms of international cooperation, the members of the site are working individually and collectively to strengthen partnerships, by mobilising tools such as the hosting of ‘visiting professors’, the setting up of thesis co-supervision and the hosting of foreign ‘post-doctoral’ students. It is envisaged, by building on existing partnerships and pooling them, to initiate conventional networks between four to six major foreign universities, with the following objectives

• to increase the success rate of European PAAs by increasing the number of applications, but also by pooling our respective networks likely to reveal international partner institutions or project leaders
• to significantly increase the international attractiveness of A2U institutions through more assertive thematic signatures and increased scientific production
• to increase international exchanges in terms of the number of people hosted in research structures, but also by encouraging outgoing exchanges to foreign institutions (doctoral students, researchers, etc.).