Rabat – Moroccan universities are once again absent from a world-leading ranking of universities, with the latest Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities set to raise uncomfortable questions in some quarters about the quality of higher education in Morocco.
The ranking features 1,000 institutions from across the world, and American universities dominate the list.
Harvard University comes first with a total score of 100; following are Stanford University (76.8) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (70.1).
The University of Cambridge comes fourth and is followed by the University of California and Princeton University.
Other universities in the top ten are the University of Oxford, Columbia University, California Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago; Yale University ranked 11th.
Like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania, are all absent from the ranking.
Egypt is on the ranking with seven universities, including Cairo University and Al Azhar University. Universities from UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan are also featured in the ranking.
In 2021, the ranking listed four Moroccan universities from Morocco among the best in physics in the Arab world and Africa.
This year, however, several rankings have pointed to Moroccan universities’ failure to improve on or at least maintain last year’s momentum and feature among the world’s best.
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The QS World University Rankings published its 2023 report in June, and the only Moroccan university to make it to the ranking was Mohammed V University in Rabat. To many Moroccan observers’ consternation, however, the Rabat-based university was the least well-ranked among Arab universities featured in the QS World University Rankings
In fact, the top Moroccan university saw a sharp drop in its global ranking from 1201+ in 2022 to 1401+ in the 2023 edition, well behind the University of Damascus in Syria.
In 2020, Moroccan institutions also failed to join the Shanghai Ranking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities.
Many other similar reports have highlighted deficiencies in Morocco’s education system. In a recent report, the Arab Barometer documented that public satisfaction with the Moroccan education sector dropped from 54% to 45% between October 2020 and April 2021.
