>>Good morning and welcome to Global Perspectives.

I'm David Dumke.

Today we are joined by Dr. Amine Bensaid who is the President of Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco.

It's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Dr. >>A pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

>>Doctor, I want to start with your own background.

You were an engineer by training and you are a Fulbright scholar.

Talk about the importance of international engagement in education.

>>Where we live in a world today where it's very difficult to imagine it without international engagement.

And and if we want our students to be relevant or we want to contribute to their understanding of the world and being relevant.

The international dimension, starting with that has started with globalization, has become extremely, extremely important.

>>I want to we're going to talk in a minute about Al Akhawayn's unique mission.

But how important was that international component in your personal life?

>>Well, like many Moroccan, young Moroccan, we we I have pictured my my future as having an international dimension.

So a large majority of of Moroccan youth naturally think about going for at least part of their university experience abroad.

And this may have to do a little bit with Moroccan history being a crossroad between Africa, the East Muslim, Arab, East and and Spain and Europe.

But some of it may also have to do with the history, with France and the relationship with with France.

And so there is a natural openness and a I think, an interest in augmenting the the perspective, uh, that that we have a little window on already by being in Morocco.

But there is enough to have that curiosity and and just going out and knowing knowing more people so.

So for me personally, it it has been a pretty much a natural evolution.

I had already always pictured it that way, uh, growing up.

And I believe it's the case for, for many, many Moroccans.

>>So I want to talk about Al Akhawayn's really unique mission, because you mentioned the relationship between Morocco and France, and obviously that's a long one.

There was a colonial relationship, and you have Moroccans obviously speak Arabic, Arabic, but also have spoken France.

Al Akhawayn is quite different than most Moroccan universities.

Why don't you tell our audience a little about that?

>>Yes.

Al Akhawayn was set up as a unique university in Morocco, and it's now 29 years old and is still unique in that perspective.

So so it has been set up really to experiment with the American model of education in Morocco.

It is a Moroccan university, but it has deliberately chosen in the vision of late King Hassan, the second, deliberately chosen the American model, deliberately chosen the liberal arts and science model in the American system.

And the reason is, is is really clear because they had to set up a actually a law in order for AUI to be able to be legal in Morocco because it violates by following the American system.

It violates some aspects of the higher education law in Morocco, specifically with respect to governance on the one hand.

And two, with respect to the to the curriculum.

And and so so AUI's mission was to prove the council approve the concept pretty much of having an American university in Morocco or a university that is on the American system in Morocco on the one hand, then on the other, the the liberal arts.

So the idea really where the the priority is on the human dimension of the student and on how can we empower a young Moroccan to choose what they think about and choose how they think about it.

And and and if you go back to the the royal decree that set up AUI you feel as if Hassan the second saw how the world was going to evolve.

So there is a lot of emphasis on on what Morocco is and serving what Morocco is in the sense of the Moroccan, Arab, Muslim, Mediterranean, African identity.

But in the same sentence, with openness on the world, U.S., Europe and Asia, and a lot of emphasis on on the one hand, mastering advanced technologies.

But again, in the same sentence on openness and tolerance and contribution to mutual understanding.

And as a result, Al Akhawayn university was pretty much born international because of its mission and because of the objective, that dimension that was part of its mission to give to to its students.

>>You mentioned that some of the rules had to be overlooked or kind of bypassed for Al Akhawayn to both come into existence and to teach how you do your private university, correct?

>>That's a very interesting question.

So so Al Akhawayn is actually a public university set up by a special law.

But that is - through that law, it is totally independent in the same way that you have independent colleges in the US.

>>So that independence is allowed you to be more flexible and kind of responsive, would you say?

>>Absolutely so.

And I believe that is part of what makes universities entrepre - more entrepreneurial, more agile.

So that has served us very well also recently, uh, and I believe also more innovative because you feel those degrees of freedom with respect to your curriculum, with respect to the partnerships that you have and so on and so forth.

So as a result, it's I believe it's easier for the mindset to cascade down to to the students.

So it's one it's if you look at your typical university in Europe, there is no expectation typically for a residential life, for student life.

Right.

And whereas typically in the US, you would have that expectation.

And so for a student who lives their entire life with you in class and outside of class, your own identity, your entrepreneurship, your innovation and so on more easily cascades down to them.

And that is part of what AUI has been to do.

Thanks to the independence that it has.

So it has received a lot of support.

It has been set up by design to be what it is.

It has received a lot of support for this experiment to, uh, to succeed.

And so today, about 76% of AUI students have a, an international study abroad experience before graduating.

We have over 300 partners to do this.

Uh, 30% of our alumni, uh, work outside of Morocco, but typically do not are not all their life outside of Morocco.

So they would go back and forth and some of them would start in Morocco and spend a few years outside of Morocco.

Really, the the vision, I believe, crystallized in the first AUI motto, which is which was excellence and identity, where the idea was to reach out for excellence in higher education in the American system, but to really be grounded and rooted in Moroccan identity.

And so we pride ourselves when we see that a lot of our students really go back and forth almost in osmosis between Morocco and and different parts of the world, whether it is through the study abroad experiences, but later through throughout their careers.

>>So tell us a little about your students.

Where do they come from?

All over Morocco and all over the world.

Where?

What?

How?

How large is this?

Is your student body.

>>So Al Akhawayn has been around 1800 students for a long time.

And and that also was pretty much by design to be that kind that size of liberal arts college.

Four years ago, Al Akhawayn decided to grow for uh really for two or three reasons.

The first reason is that Morocco's demographics are, are at a point where we have what we call in our part of the world "massification."

So the student to faculty ratio is very high on average in Moroccan public universities.

And so AUI wanted to be relevant to this, to contribute to this and to speak to the possibility of the scale up of AUI model being American among the liberal arts of what do you do in order to scale this up, in order to speak to the current equation in in Morocco?

The other reason was that AUI asked itself.

Okay, now that we have established ourselves as a Moroccan university on the American model with the liberal arts, where do we go from here?

And the choice was to, uh, really look at two challenges that we that were selected by the AUI community and its board and to say this is what we want to speak to.

And so the first was that there was a pace of change that was unprecedented, including with respect to the job market.

So we were living in this 21st century where change has been extremely dominant and uh, as, as you probably know, the liberal arts graduates are not designed to be operational.

That's not what is being optimized.

What is being optimized is, is their human dimension and their impact and so on and so forth.

>>Thinking skills.

>>And the critical thinking and other soft skills and so on and so so the idea was that, okay, the world is changing and the job market is changing, and the employer, the corporate world and the employers are being challenged by the pace of change.

What should we do as a university for our graduates to be ready for that?

And so what AUI decided to do is really strengthen its liberal arts foundation and add a layer on top of it that is specifically targeting career success.

And what that means is really reinventing the students experience with respect to experiential learning and reinventing the relationship with the corporate world.

To say we are on the liberal arts model, but how should a liberal arts university do things like this in the changing world?

So that was the first challenge.

And the second challenge was that our faculty told us that they they noticed that they had to work with the with a generation that seemed different.

And and so we started drilling that down.

And and and so we started learning about some of the research that was there, especially with respect to, uh, challenges to wellbeing and challenges to thriving of this new generation.

And so as a result, we decided to add on top of the layer for career success.

Can we as a liberal arts university, uh, measure how much difference we can make to wellbeing and, and, and so putting this, these things together.

The idea was if we succeed in doing this, how can AUI play its role serve in Morocco through this?

And we can only do it if we are able to scale up whatever best practices come out of that.

Best practices in general, but with adaptation and application in Morocco and with some really domestic innovation intrinsic to Morocco.

And for those reasons, AUI decided with this vision, decided to grow in order to speak to the scale up as we develop this new model.

>>So how big is this scale up you're talking about?

>>In five years, multiplying the number of students by two and a half.

So we were about 1,900 students four years ago.

We have now doubled that already.

So we're about 3,800 students.

And the objective is to go to 5,000 students.

And hopefully then the objective would be how do we scale up, go in setting up other campuses, uh, in Morocco in order to speak to the different specificities of different regions in, in Morocco.

>>So, so we're close to the campus of UCF, obviously, which is a school of about 73,000, and it had a massive scale up.

And of course, one of the challenges both for for UCF and I imagine for you on on a smaller scale, but still very important is how do you provide more services, even with more campuses, more students and still have that quality that you have come to be known, known for?

>>Yeah, well, that's an extremely good question because we would defeat the purpose if we were to grow without assuring that quality, especially that it's absolutely necessary to consolidate that that quality in order to be able to innovate on things that liberal arts colleges are not necessarily used to, which is reconciling between the liberal arts mission and between the job market on the one hand, and between things like measuring how do you really contribute to wellbeing or to flourishing.

So and the way we do that is really first is we have decided to grow and we have secured the resources to make sure that we grow without changing the student to faculty ratio.

Two is by strengthening the shared governance with the students.

Because you have this feedback feedback loop, it's like having a sensor for a, from an engineering perspective where, where you cannot go wrong without students saying what's up.

And the other thing is, is that there is a DNA to AUI.

You know, you get every organization has a culture.

And so AUI has had this DNA that is, uh, supported, watched, developed, promoted by its faculty and staff.

So, so we have a number of checks and balances and the that allow us so, so we've been doing this for four years now.

And on every metric that has to do with quality or with quality assurance, we have actually done better.

And and as you know, in in the governance of a of a US model university, there is a board that has this fiduciary responsibility and who is extremely interested in the growth because the mission is to see how we can have more impact and serve in Morocco, but also wants to make sure and protect the quality that you have described.

So so we're we're very happy so far because all the members have been doing very well.

>>What do you hear from from members of the business community and government?

So you have a lot of students who are going out to the workforce.

Obviously, ultimately, any university is supposed to train students and it's not.

Liberal arts education, as you mentioned, is more about training the mind, not training for a vocation specifically, but what kind of feedback do you get about this is what Al Akhawayn students are known for.

>>This is a question that is really of the core, and so thank you for asking it.

Um, as it so happens, I joined AUI two months before it opened a-- >>On the ground floor.

>>Yeah, yeah.

So, so I have and so I have seen the first cohorts of AUI graduate and I have seen how they were perceived by the job market and initially the Moroccan job market just didn't know what this species was.

And, and so, so we heard things like these graduates being asked what is so is your is your degree five years or four years or three years or what is it?

And then we heard things like, well, these students have an attitude.

So whereas we would be working with our students on critical thinking and so on and so forth, the expectation on the job market was not to have critical thinking.

>>Right, right.

>>So the initial the initial reactions were were like, what is this?

People are different, but what are they trying to do?

But but now AUI's 29 years old.

And so after the first two or three cohorts, we started hearing, uh, invariably and it continues to today to say, Oh, we really want AUI graduate because of the impact that we see on the team, because of the added value that we see when, when you have this critical thinking and so now we get requests for, for these things.

And, and as we have started working explicitly on the new model for career success, we have actually started having a much more intimate relationship with employers to the point pretty much of our students working for them while they are students with us, whether it's on co-op up alternating between the university and the the companies or with what we call corporate, some corporate X company at AUI where our students work remotely as part of teams.

And this this really was inspired by some of the changes after the COVID and then really acting pretty much as a recruitment agency for them, saying what kind of skills do do you need, what kind of corporate culture do you have, what kind of attitudes and behaviors do you prefer?

And so what we do is we've moved away from large job fairs to doing all of this homework and then then they would come and they would have the ten candidates, for example, for one position.

And in half a day they go with having already recruited.

And and the interesting thing in this is that invariably now they would ask for things like the critical thinking for things like some of the other the naturally the the communication.

And we're also learning together because the Gen Z students and graduates are different and they have their own demands and the job market needs to understand that.

So we have agreed with our corporate partners that we will play that role of of being a have you like a dual intelligence where we're trying all to learn together in order for the Gen Z to bring the value to their employers on the one hand, but also to thrive, because that is really our core mission.

>>You've been there obviously through some some times that were better and times that were more challenging.

You just mentioned COVID, for example.

As you look forward, what are some of the biggest challenges you see for Al Akhawayn and for higher education in Morocco in general?

>>For Al Akhawayn and for Morocco, higher education has to evolve in a larger context where higher education has gone through and is still going through.

And if like an inflection point and we see some of that in the US as well as uh, as in Morocco.

So uh, some of the challenges clearly have to do with uh, this new generation and its expectations on the one hand, and on the other hand with technology and the impact of technology.

So, so the challenge is how do you hold on to everything that, you know as an academic brings value to the student, as, as a human, uh, and, and, and to make sure to serve the, the Win-Win between the employer and the student.

But on the other hand, having this larger context and challenges with some tectonic shifts and paradigm shifts with respect to things like climate change, with respect to some of the geopolitical changes that are, that are happening with respect to, uh, some fundamental challenges to trust between different communities and between different countries, uh, with things like the threat that everybody sees with the developments of, uh, of weapons, with things like the impact of A.I.

as a technology not only on higher education itself, but on the job market and, and on the security.

And so, so there are some real fundamental issues that we feel that if we do not take them into account and decide how do we want to serve our students while taking this into account, or how do we want to sensitize those our students for them to be agents that will influence what happens to these things?

It feels like we would only be going through the motion years ago or decades ago.

I don't believe universities had to ask themselves questions of this nature.

But today I. I feel they would be they would lose their relevance if they do not open up and take some of these issues into account.

>>So one final question.

We just have a minute.

Minute left.

How important have your partnerships with the United States been in in your mission, meeting your mission?

>>Extremely important because we are in a different part of the world.

But our mission is has been to make sure that we have a university that is on the American model, on the liberal arts model.

And we have we are doing it and we have done it mainly with Moroccans.

So 95% of our students are Moroccans.

Of course, we have the exchange programs and and and all of that.

So we have a lot our campus is very international.

Uh, typically we have had about 50% of our faculty who are international.

But being there with the ecosystem that is not on the American system, we need to always be in a resonance and in-tune to what is happening in the American model, which itself American universities have been evolving.

American universities have had their own challenges.

Liberal Arts colleges in the US have their own challenges.

I sit on the board of the Council of Independent Colleges, and so I know about some of these things.

And typically we have it has been just a precious added value for us because in some sense it's as if we see we're able to look ahead like two or three years and it's I don't think AUI would have been able to do what it has done and to live up to its mission if it weren't for the relationships that we have with, uh, with our American partners.

>>Dr.

Amine Bensaid thank you so much for joining us today.

>>Thank you for having me.

>>And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again next week on another episode of Global Perspectives.