After going through hard and depressing phases of choosing a major, we realize that it is not only the major that we are pursuing but also a whole set of expertise and experience we need to gain for entering our field. What we study in undergraduate classes is likely to shape our future career path. In this in-depth, we will look at the euro-centricity of classes offered at AUI with a special focus on the School of Business Administration (SBA) and School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS). As we are talking about the quality of content, it is valid to wonder whether the scope of application of our knowledge will be wide enough for all the people that we care about or it will be limited to some places we will never end up going.
Teaching Approach and Materials Covered
Eurocentrism is mostly defined as a worldview/approach that centers the Western ideology or favors it over non-Western ones. In academia, it happens either through the approach and/or method that each individual professor carries out or through the material they choose to cover. In both, the background they come from is important. Apparently, there is no information available on the background of faculty in the Student Handbook at our very American style university. Yet weirdly enough, the handbook for International Students, that is provided for foreign exchange students, gives the following information only about their nationalities: “The faculty is composed of over 130 highly qualified professionals, most with PhDs or doctorates. Highly international, about 40% of full-time faculty members are Moroccan and the remaining are international representing over 15 nationalities.” (International Student Handbook, pp.8)
Indeed, this “highly international” faculty body is likely to bring international insights on different topics which sounds fruitful and exciting. However, in reality, diversity disproportionately exists depending on schools. I don’t mean that if professors are not from a certain geographic location, they shouldn’t be qualified to teach that. It is more like how and why as an educational institution, the consensus is more on having the Western perspective solely.
On the other hand, the textbooks and other resources used in the classroom to ease the knowledge acquisition process seem to matter as much as faculty members do. Reading from someone who has only seen a country or an event as an area to study knowing nothing about its people and history seems to prevent students from acquiring unbiased and local knowledge.
SHSS the Biggest Victim of Eurocentric Approach
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences, by definition, has many social components in its content. The titles for majors, minors, concentrations, and classes sound beyond perfection. When I came to Morocco, I thought I will learn so much about societies I have never heard from before, especially with respect to politics, history, and anthropology. More than anything else, as members of the AUI community we are proud of our academics with exotic topics covered.
But there is only one way to find out whether this impression has something to do with facts or not; to experience it. Mariame Maouhoub a senior student of International Studies who decided to combine a master of North Africa and Middle Eastern Studies (NAMES) to her last year of undergraduate at AUI. She says, “in my undergraduate classes, I did not find anything that I could apply to my own country, to my own region, to my own self. And so, I felt excluded from the things I have studied and I decided that maybe I would find that through studying NAMES directly.” But she also adds that this does not have to do anything with the nationality of the professors rather with the background they are coming from. If they have studied concepts from mainstream sources they are likely to assign the same to their students.
Skills of SBA Students and the International Job Market
I have lost count of how many times my friends from SBA would argue how the job market is wider for them compared to me with a degree in Humanities. However, some of them raised concerns about how qualified their skills are in those markets. When it comes to eurocentrism in academics for SBA students. there is a controversy amongst them. Many say that the class content for them is based on works from Western pioneers of the field. “In almost all of my Business classes, we focus on the rules and models that apply to the U.S and barely work on other parts of the world,” says Salma El Moustafid while fearing how she will cope with the knowledge gap in international settings. On the other hand, other Business students argue that they feel more prepared for the Moroccan job market yet not the same if it is about other places and contexts.
Finally, students from AUI take up the bulk of the job market in Morocco in different fields. Yet are they being trained enough to apply their knowledge into their own context? Are they being taught, at least, to think about diverse contexts when they are learning major concepts in the core classes of their fields?
