Educational Aspirations

In addition to asking respondents about the highest level of education they have completed, the survey asked those ages 18 to 24 about the level of schooling they would like to complete. Although educational attainment in Morocco is low, particularly among women,  aspirations for postsecondary education among Moroccan women are high, even in comparison to men (Figure 3). Low rates of completed education should not, therefore, be dismissed as simply reflecting preferences among Moroccans, but instead could be evidence of a gap in educational opportunities.

Of the women who said they wanted to attend college or university, 38% were confident that they would face no obstacles to those ambitions. Seventeen percent cited financial obstacles to pursuing higher education, and 14% believed that their parents or husbands would not allow them to go to school (Table 1).

Moroccan women are interested in a very wide variety of fields, but Medicine, Law, and Economics are the most popular fields of study among women reporting that they would like to attend college or graduate school and who have a field in mind (Table 2). Fifteen percent said they did not have a particular course of study in mind yet.