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Join on Telegram Rabat – Mohammed Rhachi, the acting president of Mohammed V University in Rabat, sat down to speak with Morocco World news, following a new release of global university rankings that placed his university first in the Maghreb region, and 946th globally.
Rhachi was initially appointed as the president of the university three years ago, and since then he has helped in maneuvering the school on a track that has proven to be immensely successful in improving its global standing. According to Rhachi, “this 64 rank jump came as a result of a controlled strategy that was not an individual accomplishment, but rather the fruition of a group effort.”
He highlighted the institution’s “organizational and structural aspect,” and the university’s ability to “accommodate the challenges and developments brought about” by the ever shifting and competitive atmosphere characterizing the international academic community. The university’s ability to adapt to such an atmosphere has been a key factor in its growth, he argued.
Among its many accomplishments, Mohammed V University currently conducts research projects on the international scale with Italy, France, Belgium, and NATO, according to the university’s official website. On the domestic front, Mohammed V has “nearly a hundred” projects promoting scientific and technological research, even working with large companies such as phosphate mining and world-leading fertilizer producer OCP Group.
In addition, the university also conducts social programs, including one in which they coordinated to provide education to prisoners in fourteen different prisons around Morocco. A lot of these programs were initiated and led by Rhachi himself, helping set the stage for the school’s monumental growth.
Rhachi noted in the interview: “The Mohammed V University has always been first nationally.” In a rapidly globalizing world, however, the school “can no longer restrict ourselves to national standards.” This realization is what motivated the Rabat-based school to restructure its systems, focusing its priorities in becoming a serious contender on the global academic scale.
One example of this restructuring was the implementation of a “service dedicated to global rankings.” This, Rhachi said, was created so that the university’s personnel could “have a global idea of the direction we’re taking, the circumstances presented to us, as well as our operating environment.”
The school has also started programs that focus on “adding English to the masters and first year of Ph.D programs” because, Rhachi stressed, it is the “default scientific language in the international scene.” To further increase the university’s research quality, Rhachi requires faculty to ask critical questions like “What do you want to do? What is your aim with this research? What are the internal goals you can achieve?” Once these questions are answered, “then we can decide the cost, then allocate funding.”
These factors all contribute to the “contemporary realities” which Rhachi says the school must acknowledge in order to maintain its vision and accomplish the ambitious goals it wants to achieve in the near future.
As for the school’s recent jump in global rankings, Rhachi proudly says it is something “well deserved and legitimate, one that the university is confident in.”
