A quiet policy shift inside Morocco’s public universities has turned into a full-blown public dispute. Over the past week, the Moroccan Human Rights League has stepped up pressure on the country’s higher education ministry, accusing officials of quietly pricing thousands of students out of graduate study.
At issue are new annual fees charged to students enrolled in master’s and doctoral programs at public universities: 15,000 dirhams for a master’s degree and 20,000 dirhams for a doctorate. For a system long associated with free, state-funded higher education, the change has landed as a shock to many households already stretched by rising living costs.
Rights advocates argue the flat fee structure amounts to indirect discrimination, since it takes no account of a family’s ability to pay. Without income-based exemptions, they warn, the reform risks locking lower-income students out of advanced degrees altogether, deepening rather than narrowing class divides inside Morocco’s higher education system.
The League has grounded its objections in law as much as in principle. It points to Article 31 of Morocco’s constitution, which guarantees the right to education, alongside international commitments the country has ratified, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It also cites a 2019 ruling by Morocco’s Court of Cassation that barred public administrations from imposing financial hurdles on access to public services.
Adding to the anger, the fees are being applied retroactively to students who enrolled before the policy took effect, a move critics say undermines the legal certainty students expect when they commit to a multi-year degree.
Ministry officials have defended the fees as part of a broader push to modernize how higher education is funded, but have offered few public details on how the revenue will be spent, a transparency gap rights groups say only deepens suspicion. Notably, no large-scale scholarship or student-loan scheme, of the kind common in countries where tuition is standard, has been announced to cushion the impact.
The Human Rights League is now demanding an immediate suspension of the fees pending a transparent national dialogue involving students, faculty and government, one it says must align with Morocco’s own constitutional and international obligations on education.
