Masters and PhD Study in Morocco: Admission, Costs and Funding

How Graduate Study Fits Into the LMD System

Morocco follows the LMD structure: Licence (three years after the bac), Master (two more years, so five years total), and Doctorat (a minimum of three years past the Master, so eight years total at the fastest). Each stage requires a fresh application, not automatic progression from the one before.

Master's Admission

Unlike open-access Licence faculties, Master's programs select candidates. Universities review your Licence transcript and overall grade average, and many add a written test, an interview, or both, especially for popular specializations. Public universities run two broad types of Master's: Master Recherche, aimed at students planning to continue into a PhD, and Master Specialise or Professionnel, built around direct entry into a specific career field.

Apply directly to your target university's graduate school or faculty, since no single centralized national platform handles Master's admission the way regulated undergraduate schools use one. Deadlines and required documents differ by university and faculty, so confirm both directly with your target program. Apply to more than one program if your options allow it, since Master's selection weighs your full academic record and open seats vary sharply between departments from one intake to the next.

A small number of Master's programs run as joint or double-degree tracks with partner universities abroad, mostly in France, giving you a semester or year at the partner institution. These arrangements exist at select public and private universities, so ask your target department directly whether such a partnership applies to your program before assuming one exists.

Doctoral Study

A PhD in Morocco requires enrollment in a Centre d'Etudes Doctorales (CED), a doctoral center attached to a university that groups students by broad research field. You need a thesis director (directeur de these) willing to supervise you before you register, so securing a supervisor typically comes before formal enrollment.

Registration renews annually, and you defend your thesis before a jury once your director and center approve it as ready. Three years is the formal minimum, but many doctoral candidates take four to six years in practice, depending on their field, funding situation and research progress.

Most doctoral centers require you to publish or present your research at conferences before you defend, and some ask for a minimum number of peer-reviewed publications tied to your thesis. Confirm your specific center's requirements early, since building a publication record takes years and works best when planned from the start of your doctorate rather than left until your final year.

What It Costs

Standard full-time doctoral registration at a public university carries only the usual small annual registration charge, the same as undergraduate daytime study. A separate fee applies specifically to part-time doctoral candidates registered on the flexible schedule track, mainly working professionals: MAD 20,000 a year for the first four years, effective from the 2026/27 academic year, according to Hespress . Full-time PhD candidates are not covered by this new schedule.

Funding Graduate Study

The undergraduate Minhaty bursary targets Licence-level and some Master's students meeting Registre Social Unifie (RSU) criteria, so check your eligibility directly with ONOUSC rather than assuming it extends automatically to graduate level. For research-focused study, the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (CNRST) runs excellence bursaries and research grants aimed specifically at doctoral candidates attached to a recognized doctoral center.

Individual labs and research projects, particularly those funded through international partnerships or national research calls, sometimes offer paid research assistant positions to Master's and PhD students. Ask your prospective supervisor directly whether their lab has funded positions before you commit to a program with no funding of your own.

International scholarship agencies and foreign university partnerships also fund a share of Moroccan graduate students each year, mostly for study abroad rather than study within Morocco. If your goal is a Moroccan-based Master's or PhD, focus your search on CNRST, university-run grants and lab funding first, since these target in-country study directly.

Realistic Timelines

Budget five years minimum from your bac to a Master's degree, and eight years minimum to a PhD, assuming no repeated years. Add extra time if you plan to work part-time alongside your studies or if your research field runs experiments or fieldwork that push past the formal three-year doctoral minimum, which happens often in practice. Talk to current doctoral students in your target center before you commit, since they give you the most realistic sense of how long a thesis actually takes in that specific field and department, rather than the formal minimum on paper.