The Moroccan Public University System: A Colossal with Feet of Clay? A thematic study of the 2020 CSEFRS sectoral report

Abstract

Originating in Anglo-Saxon countries (United States and Great Britain), NMP has spread to several countries, and Morocco is no exception. Indeed, in the context of the failure of the old management model of Moroccan public institutions, NMP has emerged as the ultimate solution. This new management approach is based on several fundamental principles that are essentially aimed at the performance of public organizations. However, it turns out that performance is a subjective, polysemous and ambivalent notion, as it is at the crossroads of a wide range of domains and has different dimensions. Moreover, being one of the most important state organizations in Morocco, the performance of the public higher education system with regulated access is at the center of the concerns of several actors, since it represents a locomotive of development and a vector of value creation. In this paper we attempt to propose an assessment of the performance of the public higher education system with regulated access in Morocco, based on the data of the sector report elaborated by the CSEFRS and the INESEF in 2020. For this purpose, we opted for Morin's (1994) multidimensional model of global performance measurement. In the end, the thematic analysis of this report revealed a mixed picture: The Moroccan university system with regulated access is a sector that generally achieves the quantitative objectives assigned to it. On the other hand, given the challenges and weaknesses that hinder its performance, it remains a major undertaking that requires a structural overhaul to move from simple performance measurement to a performance management system.

JEL classification : I23

Paper type : Applied research