but she is worried that the education she is getting, in a public system that she faults on quality, will not be enough to win her a place in a job market that she says is often skewed by bribery and favoritism.
“Students do not have an equal chance to succeed,” she said, adding that many parents had gone into debt trying to ensure that their children have some chance for a future by paying for them to study in private schools. “The quality of education all depends on the parents’ income.”
about one-third of the country’s civil servants work in the sector.
In his speech he called for mandatory foreign language training in university degree courses and a new emphasis on vocational and technical training.
In the 1980s, a political decision to reclaim the Moroccan identity resulted in a change in the language of instruction, with elementary and high school classes shifting to Arabic. Most higher education programs, however, remained in French.
Many critics attribute high dropout rates to this language switch. University students, they say, are struggling to learn in a language they barely understand.
Mr. Mrabet said other problems included an excessive focus in graduate training on quantity over quality; a failure to adapt courses to workplace opportunities; overcrowded lecture halls; student strikes; and school financing issues.
Instead of hiring graduates of the Moroccan public education system, recruiters tend to look for graduates educated abroad or the products of Moroccan private schools,
“Call centers are the biggest employers in Morocco with about 50,000 jobs that generally require good skills in French,” he said. “In some fields, like I.T., it is difficult to find people with the adequate training.”