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Providing adequate research training and career paths for researchers is a major focus of EUA activities. The Glasgow Declaration adopted by the EUA Council on 15 April 2005 stresses once more the importance of those aspects to build a European knowledge society that guarantees the future scientific and innovative development of Europe.

EUA considers the issue of doctoral programmes of the utmost importance and was instrumental in their inclusion as the third cycle in the Bologna Process in 2003. This inclusion demonstrated how essential Europe's universities are to building the European knowledge society, therefore linking the European Higher Education and Research Areas through their teaching and research activities.

Since then, EUA has concentrated on a series of activities targeted towards enhancing universities' unique role in research training. EUA's goal is both to raise awareness of the crucial role universities play all across Europe in training young researchers and to encourage institutions to take account of the changing environment in the development of their research strategies and specifically in the organisation and structure of their doctoral programmes.

The "ten basic principles" developed during the 2005 Salzburg seminar, drawn partly upon the experience of the first Doctoral Programmes Project, are emphasised in the Bergen Communiqué which was adopted by European Education Ministers in May 2005 as key principles for further development in the "third cycle" of the Bologna Process. These principles have thus become an integral part of the next phase of the Bologna Process and EUA has received a mandate from the Education Ministers to develop those principles further and present a report for the 2007 London Bologna Ministers' meeting. This work on doctoral programmes in the context of the Bologna Process is being carried forward together with Austria and France and resulted in a Bologna Seminar to discuss draft conclusions which took place in France in December 2006.

In addition, EUA has begun a follow-up project with a focus on doctoral careers entitled "From Innovative Doctoral Training to Enhanced Career Opportunities" (DOC-CAREERS). This new study will explore the relationship between doctoral training programmes and career development and employability prospects for doctoral candidates. It aims to underline the need to incorporate demands from a highly diversified labour market directly in the planning of doctoral programme structures; introduce case studies among employers to highlight such demands; and focus on mobility as an inter-sectoral as well as a cross-border activity.