Cambodia is a mainland Southeast Asian country of 16.25 million people wedged between Thailand and Vietnam. Like neighbouring Thailand, it is officially a kingdom in which Buddhism is the state religion.

Cambodia has one of the smallest populations among ASEAN countries and the lowest GDP per capita in the region of USD1,640. Cambodia has a modestly sized higher education system, with 49 public universities and colleges managed by numerous different government ministries, and 56 private or vocational institutions as of 2011.¹ Higher education institutions (HEIs) are composed of two main categories: universities, which are managed by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MOEYS), and TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) institutions, or “independent schools”, which are managed by others, the largest being the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training.

From the mid-1970s when Cambodia’s entire education system was virtually destroyed under the Khmer Rouge, to 1997 when the government relaxed university laws allowing for the opening of private universities, Cambodia’s higher education system underwent immense change. Prior to 1997, not only were all universities public, they also operated on tuition-free models. This abruptly ended following the 1997 reforms. Despite Cambodia’s relatively poor higher education enrolment rate of roughly 12% in 2018, its overall enrolment has shown significant increases from only 10,000 in the early 1990s to over 200,000 in 2013.² Cambodia’s low university enrolment is directly linked to shortages in funding and the dominant perspective throughout the country that higher education is a private good. In 2010, Cambodia spent an average of USD218 per student, compared with USD531 in Vietnam.³ The funding that the government provides to universities is based on historical and political funding models, which make transparency and systematic auditing a formidable challenge. Aside from funding issues, Cambodia’s economy arguably cannot provide employment for a substantial number of university graduates, as 60% of its labour force is still engaged in the agriculture industry.⁴ Only 14.7% and 31.3% of Cambodian university graduates between the respective ages of 20-24 and 25-34 participate in the job market.⁵ The most popular majors in Cambodian universities are business, social sciences and law, with only one in five students majoring in STEM disciplines, due to their higher associated costs and the limited availability of trained faculty.⁶

Overall, Cambodia’s higher education system faces many challenges, ranging from lack of a comprehensive system of financial governance, to transparency and resource allocation. Although average annual tuition fees of USD300-400 are inexpensive by regional standards, they still function as a high barrier to entry for many Cambodian students. Public universities rely heavily on tuition fees as their main source of revenue, which cover 80-90% of institutional expenditures for large institutions in Phnom Penh.⁷

Government scholarships for students provide tuition waiver and a modest living allowance for approximately 15% of students, and are financed directly by the universities. The total budget of the MOEYS was 12.3% of Cambodia’s national budget in 2017, of which an average 3-4% was allotted to higher education — a figure that is five to six times lower than the world average.⁸ Scarce funding has also translated into depressed salaries for academic staff at public HEIs, who earned an average monthly salary of USD100 for a 12-hour work week. In 2018, only 3.4% of university academic staff were PhD holders, though the government aims to increase this figure to 5% by 2023.⁹ Poor support for academic staff has also translated into weak research output, with no Cambodian universities appearing in the Times Higher Education World rankings, and nearly 65% of faculty members at Cambodian universities claiming to be involved in no research activities, according to a 2015 survey of 444 people at 10 universities.¹⁰

There have been signs of reform to stimulate a research culture in Cambodian universities and conform to regional standards. One step was the establishment of the Accreditation Committee of Cambodia in 2003, which aimed to introduce new quality assurance measures. More significantly, in 2010, the MOEYS launched the Higher Education Quality and Capacity Improvement Project in conjunction with the World Bank to provide USD23 million to fund higher education quality improvement between 2011 and 2015. This funding was allotted to improving the quality of teaching, university management, project-based research and enhancing the access and retention of disadvantaged students, providing 1,050 “special-priority” scholarships.¹¹

In 2018, the MOEYS released the Education Strategic Plan (ESP), a four-year plan for 2019-2023 that encompasses reforms in Cambodia’s primary, secondary and higher education systems. The ESP set a range of new goals for Cambodian higher education, including a stronger focus on national and international accreditation and implementing a centralised higher education management system, requiring 40 public universities to input data into a government-run system. This plan also aims to provide new block grants to institutions that offer specialised training that respond to the country’s need for economic and social development. This is a considerable incentive considering that nearly 84% of higher education spending in Cambodia is privately funded. Unlike other countries in the region, Cambodia lacked a national student loan scheme until very recently.

Higher Education Vision 2030

As regional and global trends towards privatisation and university autonomy spread, in 2014, the MOEYS released the Higher Education Vision 2030 to introduce substantial reforms to the higher education system. This long-term initiative is Cambodia’s equivalent to long-term plans in Malaysia and Thailand (i.e., Malaysia Education Blueprint and Thailand 4.0) and aims to shift the country’s HEIs towards international standards, increase enrolment and research focus in STEM disciplines and meet the needs of the digital economy. Along with the ESP, the 2030 roadmap encourages further integration with ASEAN countries by increasing partnership programmes with foreign universities and participating in the ASEAN International Mobility Students Programme. Though Cambodia has a negligible number of international students, partnerships with other ASEAN universities and inter-university exchange would be an outlet to internationalisation and further recognition.

Although Cambodia has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic relatively unscathed, with just over 300 cases, the pandemic has had an effect on its education system and the government’s higher education initiatives. In July of 2020, the MOEYS released a comprehensive response plan to the COVID-19 pandemic, allotting a special budget of USD31.4 million to adapt working and teaching environments to be suitable for pandemic conditions and equip schools with infrastructure to conduct remote learning. These upgrades, however, will benefit Cambodian institutions in the long-term beyond the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since early 2020, a total of 124 HEIs have been closed, impacting 222,000 students. The closure of these HEIs across the country runs the significant risk of curtailing the feasibility of the goals put in place in the ESP, as tuition fees constitute a large proportion of university funding.