Rabat – French universities continue to have an issue with discrimination against North African and Arab-sounding names in admissions, a new study suggests.
The study, published by the Gustave Eiffel University and conducted by Sylvain Chareyron, Berlanda Desuza Fils-Aime, and Yannick L’Horty, tested the admission process of more than 2,000 master’s degree programs at 84 different universities.
Using a variety of fictitious names such as Thomas Bernard, Valerie Leroy, Mohamed Messaoudi, and Rachida Saidi, the study found that names that sound like they could be from North Africa received significantly fewer responses.
Sending a simple request for information about the application process, Valerie Leroy and Thomas Bernard received over a 68% response rate, while Mohammed Messaoudi only had a 61% rate, and Rachida Saidi got a response 60% of the time.
The 7.7 point difference is down from 8.6 a year earlier, the study mentions, but still represents a relative difference of 11-12% in the chance of getting a response to a simple request.
“The permanence of these high differences shows that the results obtained were not a one-off, nor were they of a short-term nature,” the report says.
Additionally, the research found that the two names from North Africa had a 15% less chance of getting through the selection process, after testing the hypothesis in law, economy, and management schools, as well as those specializing in science, technology and health.
Additionally, discrimination is more prevalent among more exclusive and well-respected establishments. The courses that ignored requests from the students of North African origins “offer a higher quality of professional opportunities,” Yannick L’Horty told Le Monde.
The discrimination seems to apply evenly to North African students of both genders, the researchers add.
Similar results have been found previously in different European and Western countries, with applicants to universities and jobs consistently getting more rejections if they have non-Western sounding names even when all other qualifications are the same.
