Muhammed I University Oujda Multidisciplinary College, expected to be completed in the coming months, has recently generated a lot of controversy after news spread of its transformation from an open polarization college to a limited polarization national school.
A group of associative-political events in the Barkan region resorted to protest against this decision. Over the past month, a local “front” has been created on behalf of the “Local Initiative for the Defense of the Core of the University”, calling for the preservation of what he called “the main goal for which the core of the university was created.”
These protests came immediately after the meeting of the Committee on Education, Training, Research and Employment of the East Region Council on September 21, which considered the item “examine and approve changes to the draft partnership and cooperation agreement for the construction and equipping of the National School of Digital Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and robotics.”
Indeed, the East Region Council approved on Monday at its regular October session by a majority of votes the aforementioned amendment, the purpose of which is to transform the site of this school from the city of Saidia into a volcano, just in the part of the “university core” under construction.
Speaking on this occasion, Abdul Nabi Baavi, head of the Eastern Region Council, said that the controversy that had arisen on this issue in the past few days was due to “a misunderstanding on this issue”, explaining that the equipment of part of the multidisciplinary college that was established in Berkane to occupy the aforementioned school “will not cancel the rest of the specializations of this college”, and its real estate container may be expanded in the future to create other specializations, such as the multidisciplinary college in Nador.
Baavi explained the decision to move the location of the National School of Digital Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from Saidia to Berkane “with a desire to speed up its use, as its launch is expected within the next academic year, given that the building is ready.”
In the same context, Yassin Zaghlul, President of Mohamed I University of Oujda, stated that Berkane College will include two institutions of higher education, the first of which belongs to the National School of Digital Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, and the second refers to an institution that includes includes various disciplines and an open recruitment.
Zaghlul added in a statement to Hespress: “We have 5,000 beds in the Berkane Annex and therefore we cannot allocate them to one institution,” noting that “similar experiences in other regions have been successful and have been welcomed by the population.”
