What Factors Determine the Academic Orientation in Moroccan Higher Education?

Abstract

Guidance is a dynamic process that takes place throughout our lives based on various interactions with the environment. Academic and professional guidance is the most important step in a young person’s life, enabling them to make decisions about education, training, employment, and helping them to develop a career. This stage presents a problem for many high school and university students who feel disoriented in front of the plethora of courses offered. In this context, several researchers have conducted a series of studies to explain the important axes that influence this guidance process. In this work, we will present an overview of the subject of our exploratory research, “the academic orientation of Moroccan students”. Then we will see the methodology that follows in order to perform a qualitative analysis of interviews using the NVIVO software. Later, we will prove that creating a good orientation will contribute in one way or another to better employability. Then, based on the theory of planned behavior, we will propose a theoretical model of the factors explaining the students’ orientation.

1. Introduction

School orientation is a matter of concern at the personal and family level, as it sometimes determines the opportunities for a successful professional integration into the job market. The choice of discipline remains a particularly serious issue and a concern for young people seeing as it plays a large role in granting sustainable development. The latter is based on three axes: social, environmental, and economic. Moreover, among the 17 objectives of sustainable development, we find the following: the satisfaction of the essential needs of current and future generations (health, education, food, water, employment), improving the quality of life (social services, culture, etc.), strengthening new forms of renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal) and others, etc. Therefore, in order to have a qualitative education, eradicate poverty, and be able to live in good life conditions (reduce unemployment and thus have better employability), it is important to have certain skills that are primarily acquired from the school courses. Therefore, the orientation system has a fundamental role in creating a well-adapted choice, hence guaranteeing professional integration.

If the choice made is well-adapted to the skills and personal characteristics of the individual, it guarantees success in the school career and promises professional integration. It is therefore very interesting to clarify the problem of the educational orientation of young people and the factors involved in the development of an orientation choice.

From an academic point of view, it is about advising to the student about the career choices they can achieve [1]. The guidance phase concerns young people, families, and many adults who need to make career changes. Orientation is becoming central to education and employment policy in the face of the economy’s continuing need to provide the labor market with the skilled talent it requires. As a result, the issue of guidance has figured prominently in the organizational decision-making of education systems for over 50 years.

In Morocco, the process of school orientation of young people is linked to several constraints and influenced by many factors. Overall, we note that there is a lack of financial and human resources to guide and raise awareness among students. The number of orientation counselors is exceeded by the number of learners, which implies that the majority of students do not benefit from sensitization and the follow-up to better orient themselves, as well as there being a lack of personalized support.

However, students’ concerns are limited to obtain the highest scores for an attractive orientation since the choice of orientation is much more marked by “good grades”. Indeed, access to certain schools requires a high level of school results in order to be able to integrate the so-called excellence programs, and there are not enough for the student as a whole (personality, personal skills, competences, etc.).

The orientation system remains limited and does not satisfy young people’s need to be informed in order to help them make their choices and discover the professional world, since even orientation counsellors only have information on the courses offered and their opportunities and not on the current requirement of the rapidly changing job market.

The objective of this article is to clarify some points about the orientation process and to address the degree of consideration given to the link between the choice of discipline and the professional world. Therefore, we explore the factors that affect learners’ actions and attitudes towards their choice of studies and the role of orientation in securing opportunities and employability in Morocco. Our research questions include:

• What are the individual, institutional, and social factors that influence orientation performance among Moroccan students?
• What is the degree of the orientation’s impact on employability opportunities for Moroccan students?

Given that modern psychological theories of behavioral change have considerable potential for explanation and given that academic and career guidance involves active choice and a series of cognitive and behavioral adjustments, we will develop a behavioral model of ‘orientation’ by applying the theory of planned behavior, TPB (Ajzen, 1991) [2].

The theory of planned behavior (TPB) proposed by Ajzen and Fishbein is based on the theory of reasoned behavior. This theory postulates that before having a behavior it is necessary to have primarily the intention of this behavior [3] (Figure 1).

The intention towards a behavior is interpreted by three categories of factors: behavioral belief, which will lead to attitudes towards the behavior; normative beliefs towards the behavior, meaning the subjective social norms (the influence of the entourage); and, finally, the control beliefs, namely the perceived behavioral control.

Ajzen proves that to have a behavior not only does one need to have an attitude in relation to this behavior and subjective norms but one also has to believe they are capable of success (self-efficacy concept) [4].

This theory has demonstrated high predictive validity [5]. It has been applied dynamically in several fields, particularly in the field of education. For example, we have Ajzen and Maden (1986) who conducted two studies, one to predict the presence of middle school students in courses and the another for their obtention of the rating “A”. On the other hand [6], Koslowsky (1993) evaluated the link between the elements of ART (attitudes, perception of social norms, and intention) and the pursuit of graduate studies (the behavior of interest) by using multiple linear regression analysis [7].

Rune Høigaard and David Lansing demonstrated the usefulness of TPB in predicting academic achievement and the complex relationship between past behavior and cognitive processes in predicting students’ success [8]. Authors Yeo Ooi Keong’s and Giles Hirst tested the influence of individual differences in goal orientation on innovative decision-making behaviors [9].

James Tan examined the performance of the composition of the TCP and the goal orientation theory (Dweck, 1986) to better design and predict the student’s study behavior for a training intervention [10].

Moreover, the study of Davis, L, E., Ajzen, I., Saunders, J., and Williams, T. (2002) used components of TCP to predict high school completion among African Americans. In this study, students’ attitudes, perceptions of social norms, perceptions of behavioral control, and intentions were measured to determine whether they should complete high school or not (the behavior of interest) [11].

Finally, we quote the study of Z Gharlipour and all who used the TCP to identify the motivational and individual factors on the regular consumption of breakfast by middle school students [12].

In summary, TCP is an interesting theoretical framework tool for understanding and predicting human behavior in the field of education.

2. Related Work

Educational and professional guidance is a coherent and dynamic system of principles, actions, and measures that guide individuals or groups to choose specific schools, specific professions according to their inclinations, skills, and desires in order to develop individuality, to respectively train for a certain profession, and for useful social integration [13]. Educational and professional orientation is based on the knowledge of personal abilities (skills, tendencies, interests, aspirations, attitudes, motivations, willingness, and character traits) and the specifics of occupations. From the point of view of society and young people, the role of educational and professional orientation is to facilitate the identification process [14].

The guiding methods are based on theory and research related to career choice and career development. These include Hoyt’s concept of professional education, Holland’s typology of professional interests, and Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences [15]. The work of the American psychologist and researcher John Holland (2008) led to the emergence of Holland’s theory of career choice (1997) [16]. The findings suggest that student’s skills, interests, and personalities will determine their career orientation and association with a certain type of profession.

During the orientation phase, students are confronted with several guidance systems [17]. These devices do not help to make informed decisions [18] but only provide information that is often very consequential. Recommender systems (RS) are designed to facilitate decision-making among a range of available choices. However, RS typically focus only on low-risk areas. An error in recommending a movie or a book will not affect users much. The goal of paper [19] is to design an RS for school orientation. Driven by the adequate satisfaction of each student’s goals, the authors place interpretability in an explainable recommendation system for school orientation.

Currently, education and guidance systems in various countries are constantly searching for an effective program to help students, vocational training institutions, and graduates of educational institutions make choices for their academic or career paths.

In this context, the authors of [20] attempted to conduct a comparative study of academic and vocational guidance problems to develop a model for automatic classification of guidance problems based on machine learning algorithms, “E-Orientation Data”, a typology of RIASEC theory (multi-class neural networks) [21]. Due to the development of information technologies, the system provides good results and is interested in the automation of guidance tasks, allowing the classification of academic and professional orientation problems according to four categories and, thus, automatically generating questions in the field.

In a different context, some researchers are using new types of natural language human–computer interfaces in chatbots. Currently, chatbots offer a range of potential benefits and positive aspects that benefit the education sector, including personalization and 24/7 instant availability. In the work of [22], the authors developed a chatbot based on John Holland and the RIASEC theory. This chatbot is used in academic and professional orientation to identify the dominant personality types of undergraduate and graduate students who wish to enter the work market.

By investigating the relationship between orientation and social origin, the authors of [23] sought to show how social origin influences educational and professional career decisions. The orientation facts are then considered as the result of the interaction between the individual and their environment. After the main content analysis, the students found that social background is closely related to educational and career orientation difficulties. The main social axes that influence this orientation are mainly the parents’ income, their level of education, and their profession. Another work, [24], goes in the same direction, where researchers were interested in the impact of social origin on career guidance through the notion of stereotypes.

In order to bring together all the axes that influence young people’s choices at the academic and professional level, article [25] aims to answer several questions by reflecting the opinions collected from a sample of students. The main interest of the research in this work is to understand how young people judge the guidance offered to them, advised to them, and imposed on them.

3. Methodology

3.1. The Interviews

According to the objective of our study and the nature of the variables to be identified, we have chosen a qualitative method whose interest is to reproduce speeches in a more in-depth way. The individual, semi-directive interview allows us to take stock of the stakeholders’ opinions based on their lived experiences, their current situations, and their rationalities. The interview guide is composed of 20 questions organized in the form of 4 themes: (a) the orientation system in Morocco; (b) the determinants of the orientation of young people; (c) the link between the labor market and the orientation of young people; and (d) the employability of young people. The interview transcription technique used is a verbatim transcription (word for word).

3.2. Interviewing Process

Most of the interviews took place in administrative offices (face to face); their duration varied between 2 h and 3 h, with the aim of collecting as much information as possible. Each interview began with an introduction and presentation of the subject.

Our sample is varied among professors; students; orientation counselor (Regional Academy of Rabat-Sale-Kenitra); Career Development Center of Ibn Tofail University (CDC); Office of the High Commissioner for Planning (HCP); Educational Manager of Ibn Tofail University; National Agency for the Promotion of Employment and Skills: ANAPEC, university agency; young graduates; Social Development Agency (ADS); Directorate of Employment and Professional Integration—Kenitra; Ministry of National Education; professional training; higher education; and scientific research, Rabat (MENHESR), as shown in

Table 1. Characteristics of interviewees.

Code	Function of the Interviewees	Administration	Gender	Age	Duration
Int1	Advisor to the minister of education	MENHESR	Man	38	2 h
Int2	Director at the Career Development Center ITU	CDC	Man	45	2 h 30
Int3	Director at the local agency of the university ANAPEC	ANAPEC	Woman	59	3 h
Int4	Employee in Social Development Agency	ADS	Man	35	2 h 15
Int5	Guidance counselor	RA-RSK	Man	36	2 h 30
Int6	Head of statistics department	HCP	Woman	44	3 h
Int7	Interim director- Director in charge of pedagogy	ENSAK	Man	55	2 h 30
Int8	Computer engineer	Private company	Man	35	2 h 30
Int9	labor inspector	DEPI	Man	40	2 h 30
Int10	Professor	ENSAK	Man	44	2 h 30
Int11	Student	ITU	Woman	20	2 h

.

3.3. Analysis of Interviews Using NVIVO

After importing the interviews performed into NVIVO and creating the project, we moved on to the encoding stage, where we grouped the questions by themes (parent nodes). In our case, we had 4 themes: (a) the orientation system in Morocco, (b) the determinants of the orientation of young people, (c) the link between the labor market and the orientation of young people, and (d) the employability of young people.

We ran a word frequency query to find out which were the most frequent in the interviews collected, and we noticed that the terms “young people”, “orientation”, “choice”, “job market”, “competence”, and “training” were the most mentioned. We deduced that it was about the young people’s orientation and the choice of discipline and training.

4. Results

4.1. The Orientation System in Morocco

The verbatim analysis showed that most of the interviewees confirmed the absence of a guidance system for students and that young people are very poorly guided. They see that guidance is a project that requires more effort, that lack of information is a major handicap, and that young people require orientation from middle school given its importance and its role in the success of their careers. The following are quotes according to interviewees Int1, Int3, Int5, and Int10.

“The orientation of young people in Morocco is a problem that requires more efforts.” Int1

“The orientation of young people in Morocco is done in a random way. It does not take into account the latent skills and abilities of young people.” Int10

“Orientation starts from middle school, for this we have a program that works on the following axes: the personal project, the choice of training, awareness and all that is done in the form of activities, presentations and psychometric tests for self-recognition. We can identify the strengths and weaknesses of each learner. But this always remains weak compared to the expectations of young people.” Int5

“No, I don’t think there’s a guidance system with this potential.” Int3

4.2. The Determinants of the Orientation of Young People

Factors that may influence the choice of discipline are the parents, the experience of a person close to the family, grades obtained, skills, preferences, job market, institution, and student objectives.

From the same Figure (Figure 2), we can see that orientation should focus on the youth’s academic profile as well as personal qualities and skills. The determinants of discipline and training are school results, young people’s preferences and interests, the requirement of the job market, and the training systems offered (duration of studies, opportunities, continuation of studies, entry conditions, environment, etc.).

4.3. The Link between the Labor Market and the Orientation of Young People

The majority of participants admit that young people try to make the link between the job market’s requirements and their educational choices, but they are not better informed about the job market’s requirements because of the lack of accurate and real information and the evolution of professions. All of the interviewees affirmed that knowledge of the labor market’s needs will contribute to a better orientation The following are quotes according to interviewees Int1, Int6, and Int7.

“There is a problem with the flow of information between the actors involved.” Int6

“Young people have knowledge about labor market needs, but this knowledge is wrong. The picture needs to be clearer.” Int1

“I think they try to make the connection between labor market needs and their choice of studies but that’s just based on the background prejudices and their family environment.” Int7

4.4. The Employability of Young People

As shown in (Figure 3), several factors influence the access to the employment: diploma/training, professional experience/internships, and transversal skills/soft skills.

The majority of the participants testified that the category of “Bac + 2” and “Bac + 5” diplomas are the most demanded on the labor market and indicated that “Bac + 3” and “Bac + 8” are less involved in the job market.

The analysis of the verbalism showed that the interviewees revealed that the fields and training specialties most in demand on the labor market are IT, economics (finance, accounting, management, etc.), electrical/mechanics engineering, automotive, and new technologies, as well as language labs (French–English) Figure 4.

5. Discussion

The strategic vision of the education reform 2015–2030, drawn up by the Higher Council for Education training and scientific research, aims to set up a new school whose foundations are equity and equal opportunity, and the efficient and appropriate application of the educational model. In addition, it has insisted on supporting young people and helping them to formulate their choices of educational and professional pathways by emphasizing the need for a global review of educational, professional, and university guidance in the long- and short-term through the staging of the concept of guidance, its processes, and its methods in a referential and cognitive framework (section 12 of chapter 83).

This study aimed to show that the orientation of young people is determined according to several factors, which must be taken into consideration and which must be studied and worked on one by one in order to make a good decision concerning the choice of studies to be carried out for better educational, training, and vocational guidance, knowing its impact and importance on employability and to avoid a high unemployment rate.

According to the results obtained, several factors can influence the choice of the course of study of young people, and we can classify them according to several dimensions.

The school environment, which includes the school results, the grades obtained, and the school profile of the young person, leads to the fact that not all young people have the possibility of integrating into the large schools, because the latter set a mark threshold for admission. The social environment includes the influence of parents, the experience of people close to the family, and the entourage, which is consistent with the research of Delphine Lacaze [26] which presents a qualitative study of the orientation factors of accounting students in the French context.

The results show that the qualities and personal skills as well as the preferences and interests of young people (personal characteristics) contribute to the process of orientation, since motivation is essential to succeed with the choice made. In accordance with what has been presented in the study of L. Lardy et al. [27], they have identified the factors influencing students’ academic success in the first year of a technological university, such as motivational and behavioral variables defining the academic programs.

This study illustrates the relation between the labor market and the orientation of young people. The requirements and needs of the labor market influence in one way or another the process of orientation of young people with the aim of having better work opportunities and avoiding unemployment. However, unfortunately, the image of the job market in Morocco needs to be clearer, because the information must be accurate, real, and current in order to avoid any ambiguity. We can also note that the training systems offered (duration of studies, opportunities, continuation of studies, entry conditions, environment, etc.) are conditions likely to guide the choices of young people [28].

According to the analysis of the verbatim, we find that the diploma, and the type of training and its specialty, which constitute the results of the orientation, play an essential role in the employability of young people and that even the soft skills acquired either during the school profile or through internships influence employment opportunities.

Consequently, we deduce that the choice of studies made or the orientation has a significant impact on the subject of employability in accordance with [29].

The theory of TBP proposes that the decision of an individual to engage in a behavior is based on their intention to engage in this behavior and the latter is determined by three variables: Personal attitudes, Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control.

By making the connection between our results and the TCP theory, we can conclude “a behavioral model of orientation” (Figure 5), which proposes that the attitudes to have the intention to make a choice of study is explained by multiple variables, including the personal project/goals, preferences, interests, and personal qualities.

The subjective norms are interested in the way of perceiving the ideas of others on the studied behavior, and our results are the influence of the family, experience of relatives, and the requirement of the job market. Finally, concerning the perceived behavioral control, the analysis of our results show that taking into account school results/grades obtained and training systems can influence the evaluation of the control factor and subsequently improve the predictive power of the theory. This leads us to conclude the model below (Figure 5).

6. Research Limitations

The current study was built on the method of qualitative research which provides a theoretical conception of the following problem: “the facts which determine the orientation of the Moroccan students” from the points of view of our actors. The collection of data is determined from surveys on the field; therefore, the results and the analysis were based on qualitative answers obtained on a restricted sample, something that must be taken into consideration. The situational factors, the conditions of the conversation, and the mood of the actors make this study more limited. Future research may be able to combine qualitative evidence with quantitative evidence.

7. Conclusions

This article is an overview of the study’s subject, “the young Moroccans’ educational orientation”, which was obtained through the processing and analysis of interviews conducted on our topic.

However, as we have seen in the results presented above, it is not only school results that influence the young people’s orientation, but there are other elements such as the requirements of the job market (which would appear to be unclear for young people), the preferences, the interests, the objectives, and the personal qualities.

Thus, it is noted that the choice of the path is not made in an objective way, but it is influenced by the family and the job market’s requirements, which seem unclear to the young people. This study showed that the factors which determine the orientation are not limited just to what was mentioned above but also to the school career and the training system offered.

A large amount of information was also presented on employability, such as the factors that influence access to employment, including diploma/training, professional experience/internships, transversal skills/soft skills, and the most demanded sectors and training specialties on the labor market, which links academic orientation with employability, meaning that better orientation will contribute to better professional integration. The Moroccan education system should encourage innovative policies and projects that allow the development of the guidance system to raise awareness and guide students toward relevant choices and appropriate career opportunities by working on the factors that influence guidance behavior.