Study: Muslims in France face discrimination in higher studies

Students with Muslim names and surnames applying to graduate programmes are discriminated against more than those with ethnically French names, a recent study conducted in France has revealed.

Researchers at both the Higher Education Discrimination and Equality Monitoring Agency and Gustave-Eiffel University sent more than 1,800 emails in March 2021 to the education directors of 607 graduate programmes from 19 universities to test the latter's discrimination against people with disabilities and those with foreign origins, according to local media.

The test was conducted by researchers with false names, for both those with disabilities and those without –– used as test cases –– to graduate programme directors.

The directors whom researchers contacted claimed to embrace diversity in their applicants and did not prioritise people who come from a European background, but the researchers found otherwise.

Muslims in hot water 

Those with a Muslim name, the study found, were 12.3 percent less likely to receive a response to emails sent to each of their graduate programmes. 

This rate was 33.3 percent in the field of law, 21.1 percent in the fields of science, technology and health, and 7.3 percent in the fields of language, literature, art, humanities and social sciences. 

The researchers anonymously interviewed the same educational directors three months after the study concluded on behalf of the Ministry of Higher Education "about the difficulties they encountered in the process of recruiting students," finding then the double-standard when it came to the directors’ desire to embrace diversity.

No discrimination was found for students who said they were physically disabled.