Higher Education in Morocco: Historical Development, Research Trends, and International Standing

Abstract

Why do the successive reforms of Moroccan higher education (MHE), despite their ambition, struggle to transform the system and lift its universities into global scientific competition? This is the study's guiding question. Available works address the system's institutional history, its bibliometric dynamics, or international rankings separately, but rarely connect them. This research adds value by filling that gap through an integrated reading, drawing on institutional theory and the concept of path dependence, to show that current blockages are not cyclical but inherited from past choices that lock reform trajectories.

Methodologically, the study rests on a triangulated documentary and bibliometric analysis: a corpus of legislative texts, charters, and institutional reports (CSEFRS, CNRST, HCP) is cross-referenced with scientific output data from Web of Science and Scimago (2000–2022), then interpreted through institutional frameworks.

Three results emerge. First, despite a nearly eighteenfold increase in publication volume (from around 800 articles in 2000 to over 14,000 in 2022), the normalized impact index remains below the global average (0.78 versus 1.0), and R&D spending stalls at 0.75% of GDP. Second, the major rankings reproduce, through a linguistic bias favoring English, hierarchies unfavorable to universities of the Global South. Third, these dynamics combine with internal locks (centralization, linguistic fragmentation, lecture-based teaching). Hence a central recommendation: favor a differentiated positioning, anchored in Morocco's specificities, rather than imitating dominant models.

JEL code: I23

Paper Type: Theoretical research