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International
Journal of Learning & Development
ISSN 2164-4063
2012, Vol. 2, No. 2
Cambodia’s Higher
Education Development in
Historical
Perspectives (1863-2012)
Sam
Rany (Corresponding author)
School of
Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia
PO box
11800, Penang, Malaysia
Tel:
604-175-063-234 Email: sr11_edu045@student.usm.my
Ahmad
Nurulazam Md Zain
School
of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia
PO box
11800, Penang, Malaysia
Tel: 604- 653-297-1 Email: anmz@usm.my
Hazri Jamil
School
of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia
PO box
11800, Penang, Malaysia
Tel:
604-653-298-9 Email: hazri@usm.my
Received: March
17, 2012 Accepted:
April 20, 2012 Published: April 21, 2012
Doi:
10.5296/ijld.v2i2.1670 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijld.v2i2.1670
Abstract
Similar to
other Southeast Asian countries in the world, Cambodia has established her
higher education institutions to develop human capital with high knowledge and
professional ethics to serve the country over the period of contemporary
history. Clearly, colonization, political ideologies, and global economic
development tendencies have directly influenced Cambodian public higher
education institutions within her various political regimes and social
transformation. The purpose of this study is to examine the Cambodian higher
education development in the seven different regimes through historical
perspectives from the French colonial
period to the
present period. This paper uses a predominantly descriptive approach relying on
secondary sources such as academic papers, textbooks, government documents, non
government organization documents, and development partner reports. Therefore,
this research could be significant for researchers, academicians, and
policymakers to deepen their understanding about Cambodian higher educational
history in order to reform its system to the benefit of education quality and
student academic success.
Keywords: Cambodia, higher education institutions,
development, historical perspectives, public university, education system,
tertiary education
1. Introduction
Historically, Cambodia established its first higher educational
institution during the Angkor Empire, which was a
powerful kingdom in the Southeast Asian region in the 12th century. During this glorious period, it had two main universities
located in Preah Khan temple (Vat Cheysrey) and Taprom temple (Raja Vihear) under the administration of Andradevy, the
queen of King Jayavarman VII (1181-1220).
In this medieval time,
temples had a significant role in promoting educational, cultural, and
innovative activities. Consequently, about 1081 ancient famous temples were constructed nationwide as a result of this fruitful period. Moreover,
there were 18 individuals with doctoral degrees (cultural and religious
intellectuals) and 740 university
teachers to transform the Khmer elite to enhance
the national human resource capital
of the country (PUB, 2009).
After the decline of Angkor in the 15th century,
Cambodian higher learning institutions were destroyed and closed because of
wars and invasions from the neighboring countries included Thailand and
Vietnam. In these hardship periods, pagodas became the best educational and
professional institutions for Khmer scholars and intellectuals. To stop the
aggressive ambition of these two countries, Cambodian King Ang Duong
(1797-1860) invited France to be Cambodia’s protectorate in 1863. Under the
French protectorate and colonization, France tried to transform the Cambodian
traditional education system into a modern or western educational system. In
addition, many public schools and higher learning institutions were established
throughout the country. During the post colonization period, Prince Sihanouk
paid more attention to tertiary education through the building up of many
higher education institutions nationwide. For example, Unfortunately, Cambodian fell into the cold
war in 1970, and tertiary education also experienced growing pains during a turbulent
23 year period (1970-1993) resulting in a
decimated educational system. Tragically, during the Democratic Kampuchea
regime (DK) between 1975 and 1979, most Cambodian intellectuals, scholars, and
academics were lost in the genocide. After the civil war was over in 1998,
however, Cambodia has strived to develop and reform her higher education
institutions until now.
Therefore, this paper will investigate the historical perspectives
of Cambodian higher education development during the French protectorate and
colonization, the Prince Sihanouk period, the Khmer Republic period, the
Democratic Kampuchea period, the Vietnamese occupation period, the UNTAC and
Coalition government period, and the Hun Sen period.
2. Cambodian higher education development from a historical
perspective
The higher educational system in
Cambodia has been divided into seven stages in its development because each phase presents the ideological and political regime at that
point of the history of Cambodia. The country experienced many
ideologies and politic which comprised
traditionalism, colonialism, Buddhist socialism, monarchy, republicanism, Maoist communism, Vietnamese communism,
United Nations transactional authority, and a hybrid democracy respectively. Each regime amended the national constitution and educational policies
to its own liking. For example, Prince Sihanouk founded
the Royal Khmer University (RKU) during his rule on January 13, 1960. This university had changed its name to the
Phnom Penh University (PPU) during the Khmer Republic or Lon Nol’s regime in
1970. In 1980, it has been converted to the Higher Normal College (Ecole
Normale Superieure) during the Vietnamese occupation. Ultimately, this name
has been changed to the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) in 1996. This
section will highlight a historical perspective in each stage of the
development.
2.1. Under the French protectorate and colonization (1863-1953)
This section discusses Cambodian
education historical perspectives prior to and under French colonization. Prior
to the French colonial period, pagodas were the educational and professional
training centre of the nation. The Cambodian education system was characterized
as community-based pagoda institutions, where Buddhist monks had independent and important
educational duties to transfer their knowledge with the
integration of religious and cultural instructions. For instance, monks would
instruct boys and youth in
carpentry skills mixed with Khmer literacy closely associated with the concepts of Buddhism
and Cambodian culture. During the pre-colonial period, as only
pagodas were seen as educational centers for the Cambodian people, the majority of the people were illiterate. There were no other
schools. Consequently, Ayres has argued
that most Cambodian people learned their rich cultural
heritage through the country’s
popular proverbs and sayings, traditional law (didactic poems), epics such as
the Reamker (Khmer version of the Ramayana Indian story), and folk tales via word of mouth (Ayres, 2000). Therefore, the main purpose of education during this period was to
educate young men with the general knowledge
about life and society such as social ethics, life skills, as well as to
attain a certain degree of basic literacy (Dy, 2004).
Similarly, during the
90 years of French protectorate
and colonization (August 11, 1863 to November 9,
1953), France introduced its own administrative and educational system in
Cambodia, which seemed to be somewhat successful in its efforts. After
four years of the protectorate, King Norodom (1834-1904), grandfather of Prince
Sihanouk, established the first school for 40 students of the royal family
using French as the language of instruction. Shortly thereafter, France opened the first public schools in Phnom Penh, Kampot, Kampong Cham, and
Kraties in 1873, and founded the first
training centre for colonial administrators and officers in 1893 (Masson, 1997). In 1906, King Sisowath
issued a royal edict on compulsory
education requiring parents to send their
sons and daughters to study basic Khmer literacy and mathematics at the age of eight. The first Cambodian Civil Code was promulgated
in 1915 in which articles 356 and 357 stated parents’ obligation to provide
their children with education. In 1917, the Cambodian School of Administration (Ecole
d’Administration Cambodgience) was founded to train young people to be civil servants in the country. In 1935,
Sisowath High School (Lycee Sisowath), the country’s oldest and sole secondary school,
was opened for Cambodian students with a low standard of education when
compared with western secondary schools.
As cited in (Duggan, 1996), Galasso (1990) analyzed
the gaps between traditional and modern education. He maintained that most
rural children attended pagoda schools, which combined traditional and modern
teaching methodologies whereas a small group of provincial towns and Phnom Penh capital allowed students to access Franco-Khmer
schools under a French system
with a four year primary program. And another four years
of lower secondary school was leading to the
Franco-Khmer Secondary School Diploma; and then a three year secondary program leading to the Baccalaureate that
would allow enrolment in French
universities. During that time, there
were a few post secondary schools and higher
learning institutions in the country so that only wealthy and state-sponsored
outstanding students had opportunities to further their higher learning overseas. Consequently, a small elite group was able to study
at French universities in France or Vietnam.
As highlighted by Tully, national education during the colonial period
faced crucial problems. The vast majority of schools suffered from poor
teaching methodology, lack of resources and financial support, unqualified
teachers and the misunderstanding of peasants who withheld their children from attending public schools provided by the French colonial power. Also, a clash occurred between the
traditional values of the monk-teachers and the content
of a new curriculum based on
European modern thinking (Tully, 2002). Surprisingly, the first
Cambodian higher learning institution,
namely the National Institute of Juridical, Political and Economic
Sciences (NIJPES), was established for Cambodian scholars who intended to be
civil servants in the colonial
government in 1949
(Ayres, 2000; Howard, 1967;
Tully, 2002). A study by Clayton & Ngoy (1997) pointed out that the French
government used higher education as a “sorting machine to recruit the best
students from basic education for advanced education in order to equip the
country with a large number of modern and competent civil servants” (Clayton, 1997). In short, it can be concluded that the educational system during the
colonial period experienced some problems with the integration of traditional
and western educational systems, with funding
constraints, unqualified teachers, and inferior educational quality.
2.2. Under the Prince Sihanouk (1953 -1970)
Cambodia was granted peaceful independence from France at the Geneva Conference
on November 9, 1953. Prince Sihanouk strove to promote educational
policies from basic education to tertiary education, to transform
the country into an industrialized and technologically advanced modern state in the region. The king subsequently
created two very efficient
political mechanisms: the People’s Socialist
Community (Sangkum Reastr Niyum-SRN), and the movement of Socialist
Youth of the Khmer Kingdom (SYKK). The government of King Sihanouk
allocated more than 20 % of its annual national
expenditure for a massive educational expansion program
to consolidate his ideology of “Buddhist socialism” to educate Cambodian
students and youth to adopt loyalty to the
monarchy and Marxist egalitarianism,” (Ayres, 2000, p. 449). Moreover, he
reformed the French- related curriculum, which was a legacy of colonialism, into a Cambodian curriculum covering
Khmer culture, history, arts, and
science etc. (Clayton, 2005). As a result of this policy, the number of
primary, secondary schools, and new universities increased dramatically throughout the
country (Chendler, 2008). Remarkably, seven higher educational institutions were established between 1953 and 1959 including the
National Institute for Law, Politics, and Economics (1953), the Royal Medical
School (1953), the Royal School for Public Administration (1956), the National
Institute of Pedagogy (1958), the Faculty of Letters and Humanity Studies
(1959), the Faculty of Science and Technology (1959), and the National School
of Commerce (1959) (Chhum, 1973). Furthermore, nine public and
prestigious universities appeared in provincial and
municipal territories. The Buddhist University, a first university in this
regime, was opened in 1954 offering religious studies and Khmer language studies, and the Royal
Khmer University followed in 1960. Five years later, six additional
universities emerged in 1965 comprising of the Royal
Technical University (RTC), the Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA), the Royal University of Kompong Cham (RUKC), the Royal
University of Takeo-Kampot (RUTK), the Royal University
of Agricultural Science (RUAS), and the People's University (PU) (Pit, 2004), and lastly, the Royal
University of Battambang (RUBB) which opened in 1967. French was
used as the language of instruction in most
universities and higher learning institutions. Enrolment in higher
educational institutions
dramatically increased from approximately
200 students in 1953 to 5753 students in 1970. This signified a
great achievement in the history of Cambodian higher education
(Howard, 1967). To sum up, it was a
significant period of rapid development of Cambodian modern educational system
during the People’s Socialist Community.
Table 1: The list of Universities and Institute under
the Prince Sihanouk
No.
|
Universities/Faculties/Institutes/Schools
|
Date of Establishment
|
1
|
The National Institute for Law,
Politics, and Economics
|
1953
|
2
|
The Royal Medical School (RMS)
|
1953
|
3
|
The Buddhist University (BU)
|
1954
|
4
|
The Royal School for Public
Administration (RSPA)
|
1956
|
5
|
The National Institute of Pedagogy
(NIP)
|
1958
|
6
|
The National School of Commerce (NSC)
|
1959
|
7
|
The Faculty of Letter and Humanities
(FLH)
The Faculty of Science and Technology
(FLH)
|
1959
|
8
|
The Royal Khmer University (RKU)
|
1960
|
9
|
The Royal Technical University (RTC)
|
1965
|
10
|
The Royal University of Fine Arts
(RUFA)
|
1965
|
11
|
The Royal University
of Kompong Cham (RUKC),
|
1965
|
12
|
The Royal University of Takeo-Kampot
(RUTK)
|
1965
|
13
|
The Royal University
of Agricultural Science (RUAS)
|
1965
|
14
|
The People University (PU)
|
1965
|
15
|
The Royal University of Battambang
(RUBB)
|
1967
|
2.3. Under the Khmer Republic (1970-1975)
After the coup d’état on March 18, 1970, the Lon Nol government ousted Prince Sihanouk as head of state. He abolished the
monarchy, and announced a new constitution that changed Cambodia
into the Khmer Republic under the
support of the United
States government. Similar to Prince Sihanouk’s policy, the Lon Nol government had considered education expansion as a priority for the success of the country's development (Ayres, 2000). Unfortunately, higher education in this period was confronted with social and political issues resulting from the cold
war, in particular, the influence of the ideology of a
new regime dominated by western concepts of republicanism, capitalism, and
democracy. The controversy of these political ideologies as well as a nationwide
civil war destabilized the education program between
1970 and 1975 (Ayres, 2000; Chendler, 2008). In addition, the Khmer Republican government actively fought
against the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge. About 600,000
Cambodian citizens were killed by
aerial bombardments between 1969 and 1973 (Ear, 1995). Because of war and insecurity, most schools and universities were
either destroyed or forced to close with almost 200 foreign
lecturers fleeing the universities and
the country (Chhum, 1973). Consequently, there
were few local lecturers, who had qualified
experiences to provide educational services in Cambodian universities. The
University of Takeo-Kampot was completely destroyed by aerial bombardments on 1
May 1970, the University of Kompong Cham was partially destroyed, and the
University of Battambang was totally closed in early 1971. According to Tan Kim
Houn (1974), there were only five urban and two provincial universities that
remained open to provide educational
services and these were the
University of Phnom Penh (UPP), the University of Fine Arts (UFA), the
University of Agronomic Science (UAS), the Buddhist University (BU), and the
Technical University (TU). In the academic year of
1971-72, the enrollment rates of universities either remarkably increased or decreased
because students fled to the countryside or
to safe places. For instance, the enrollment of the UPP significantly increased from 4547 in 1970 to 6840 in
1971, while the TU decreased from 573 in 1970 to 298 in 1971, the UFA increased slightly from 117 to 155 and two
provincial universities decreased from 357 in 1970 to 37 in 1972. In summary, the educational system during the Khmer Republic faced problems of
ideological disputes, the cold war, shortage of
qualified local lecturers, and reduction in the number of educational facilities, substandard teaching and research work,
resulting in inferior educational quality.
Table 2: The list of universities under the Khmer
Republic (1970-1975)
No.
|
Universities/College/Institutes
|
Date of Establishment
|
1
|
The University of Phnom Penh (UPP)
|
1970
|
2
|
The University of Fine Arts (UFA)
|
1970
|
3
|
The Technical University (TU).
|
1970
|
4
|
The University of Agronomic Science
(UAS)
|
1970
|
5
|
The Buddhist University (BU)
|
1970
|
6
|
The University of Takeo-Kampot (UTK)
|
1970
|
7
|
The University of Kompong Cham (UKC)
|
1970
|
8
|
The University of Battambang (UB)
|
1970
|
2.4. Under the Khmer Rouge (1975 -1979)
After Khmer Rouge took over the country on 17 April 1975, Pol Pot
immediately established the Democratic Kampuchea government (DK) led by the
Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK).The DK, imitating the Cultural Revolution of
the People Republic of China, implemented the national policy of
“self-reliance” and “self-mastery” to turn the country into
an agrarian society to develop its economy. Even though the government provided schools
throughout the country, they only
furnished basic education for the purpose of their
political ideology in order to achieve the policy of an agrarian revolution (Ayres, 2000: 106, 118). Over the next three
years, eight months and 20 days, the Khmer Rouge systematically eliminated all existing social, economic, political and cultural infrastructure
in the country (Chendler, 2008). Cambodian higher education institutions also fared badly. Under the Democratic Kampuchea regime, about 1.7 million
Cambodians were decimated through
executions, overworking, starvation, and disease. Educational facilities were completely destroyed, and approximately
75 percent of higher educational lecturers and 96
percent of university students were lost in genocide (Pit, 2004). Of the 21,000 trained
secondary school teachers in 1975, about 3000 had survived in 1979
(David, 1999). For example, prior to the DK, Cambodia had 5,275 primary schools,
146 secondary schools, and 9 higher education institutions, but about 90
percent of these educational facilities and all their documents were completely destroyed under this regime. In addition,
this regime wanted to destroy the legacy of previous regimes by
releasing the country from the clutches
of capitalism, western ideas, thinking and
institutions, poverty and corruption in major cities throughout the
country (David Ayres, 1999).
According to Vickery (1984) as cited in (Tomas Clayton, 1998), Pol Pot created new a educational policy, namely, the 1976 Four Year Plan (1976-1980) to build socialism
in all areas that required all
children to attend at least three years of a
part-time primary school program. Pol Pol had an extreme vision to fast track the
education of Cambodian
students from illiteracy to become an engineering graduate in 10 years of
training and practical works. The most popular slogan during this regime was
“Study is not important. What’s important is work and revolution.” As
highlighted by Chandler (1993), the DK ignored educational quality by recruiting uneducated peasants, based on their revolutionary positions and honesty, to be teachers and to teach students during lunch breaks in
a 14 hour workday. Moreover, DK
introduced many revolutionary songs depicting national
sacrifices in the curriculum of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, natural science, physics,
chemistry, history of the Cambodians, world
revolutionary struggle, the party’s
politics, and moral philosophy in order to transform students and
to purify their political
consciousness ( Ayres, 1999). In short, the failures of DK’s extreme communist ideology and its
educational policy brought Cambodia to year zero of the
destruction of education in the country.
2.5. Under the Vietnamese occupation (1979 – 1991)
After the collapse of Democratic
Kampuchea on January 7, 1979, a new government with the support of Vietnamese
forces was established, namely the
People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) or the United Front for the National
Salvation of Kampuchea (UFNSK) guided by the Kampuchea People’s Revolutionary
Party (KPRP), and led by Heng Samrin. During the Vietnamese invasion and
occupation, the war extended contentiously throughout the country. Many
Cambodians had little trust in the Vietnamese-backed new government because Vietnam had always been Cambodia's enemy in its longstanding history. The regime also faced
controversial disputes with the international community, which imposed economic
and political sanctions on both the new People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK)
and Vietnam (Ayres, 2000). ASEAN states (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippine, and
Indonesia), China, and the United States sponsored Cambodian armed forces
resistance along the Cambodia-Thailand border.
During this period of hardship, PRK
started to restore the educational system by calling survivors to be teachers and trainers in schools and
institutions of higher learning. According to Hun Sen, the government
implemented its policy of “people with low education teach the ones
with no education”, “people with high education teach the ones with low
education”(Sen, 2011 ). During this period, five main Cambodian higher and technical
educational institutions adopted
hybrid systems from the Soviet
Union, Vietnam, and other Eastern-bloc countries. These countries provided technical assistance
with both human resources and teaching materials at all levels including higher
education (Ayres, 2003). Higher educational institutions had
major roles to provide good political and technical
training to promote the ideology of socialism. In order to achieve this goal,
tertiary students were required to study five main areas including Marxist-Leninist Theories, Global and Cambodian
Revolutionary Histories, Situation and
the Role of the Revolution and the Policy of the Party, Moral Education and the
Revolutionary Way of Life, and Attitude to the Common People (Clayton, 1999). In December 1979, the
Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, the first higher
learning institution, was opened by the new
government. Approximately 10-20 medical doctors from the Vietnamese Ministry of
Health came to train the few surviving Cambodian
students who had not completed their medical
studies before the DK regime. This faculty offered
a six year medical program. In July 1980, the Teacher Training College was established, and
about 40 Vietnamese professors from the Vietnamese Ministry of General
Education trained Cambodian students who had not graduated from their higher
educational institutions before
1975. This college offered a three year program to become high
school teachers. In September 1981, the Khmer Soviet
Friendship Higher Technical Institute was established
with the full support from the Soviet Union financially, technically, and in
the area of human resources. About 56 Soviet professors
provided lectures in six different majors including Civil Engineering, Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Industrial Chemistry, Agro-Hydrology, Mines and Mining, and
Geology from 1980 to 1989. The Institute of Economics was established in
September 1984 with the full support of Vietnam
by providing all professors, text books, as well as
the curricula. Approximately 35-40 Vietnamese
professors, who came from the University of Economics in Hanoi, taught the five major areas of Agro-Economics,
Industrial Economics, Commerce, Finance, and Economic Planning. In January
1985, the Institute of Agriculture opened under the financial and technical support of the Ukraine Agricultural
Academy. About 56 professors from other institutions in the
Soviet Union came to teach in the five major areas of Agronomy, Forestry, Fisheries, Veterinary Medicines, and
Agricultural Mechanics. In addition, many
students were sent to study at
friendly countries through educational and cooperation
agreements.
According to Virak (2009), 6,509 students were sent abroad
to study between 1979 and 1989, among
them, 1,426 were females. Cambodian students who received scholarships from
receiving countries to study abroad included 159 students to Bulgaria, 60 to
Cuba, 300 to the Czech Republic, 1179 to East Germany, 191 to Hungary, 25 to
Laos, 30 to Mongolia, 80 to Poland, 3730 to Russia, and 751 to Vietnam (Virak, 2009). In 1989, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) changed its name
to the State of Cambodia (SC) after the withdrawal of the Vietnamese army and the collapse of Soviet Union (RU). By 1990, 977
students graduated from Cambodian higher educational institutions to become doctors,
dentists, and pharmacists, 2,196 to become high
school teachers, 1,481 students as foreign language
specialists, 474 students as technical
engineers, 400 students as economists, and
184 students as agricultural engineers
respectively. In brief, the higher education institutions during the
Vietnamese occupation were dominated by political ideology of socialism and inferior education equality and they depended
absolutely on the financial and technical support of countries
with friendship agreements, but they were the first professionally trained technical experts
in Cambodia. Many women assumed
leadership roles that they had never been able to assume before. Girls had
equal rights to access higher education, as did boys for the first time in
Khmer history.
Table 3: The list of Universities and Institute under
the Vietnamese occupation
No.
|
Universities/College/Institutes
|
Date of Establishment
|
1
|
The Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
(FMD)
|
December 1979
|
2
|
The Teacher Training College (TTC)
|
July 1980
|
3
|
The Khmer Soviet Friendship Higher
Technical Institute
|
September 1981
|
4
|
The Institute of Economics (IE)
|
September 1984
|
5
|
The Institute of Agriculture (IA)
|
January 1985
|
2.6. Under the UNTAC and the Coalition Government (1991 - 1997)
This period was a new
beginning of reform, restructuring and development of Cambodian higher educational institutions.
After a decade of civil war and two years of negotiations, the Cambodian
conflicting parties, which were the
Cambodian’s People Party (CPP), the Democratic Kampuchea (DK), the National
United Front for Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCEPEC),
and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF), signed the Paris
Peace Accord on October 23, 1991 initiated by the United Nations in order to
end the longstanding war in Cambodia (UNESCO, 2011). The UN Security Council established the United Nations
Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) to ensure the implementation of the
peace agreement, and the organization of free and fair elections.
During the transition period from
1991-1993, there were very few educational changes conducted by UNTAC because
the government retained control over the administration of the existing education sector. After the general election in 1993,
the new constitution and a coalition
government were established to
facilitate the organization and implementation of national policies. The new government
proclaimed its commitment to develop
human resources and capacity building by increasing to at least 15 percent of
public expenditure of the whole national
budget on education although it fell from 11.8 percent in 1996-97 to 8.3 percent in 1998-99 (Ayres, 2000). In 1994, the government together with the sponsoring international
development partners created a national
development strategy entitled “National
Program to Rehabilitate and Develop
Cambodia (NPRD)” in which human resource development was one of its key
pillars. A project of the United National Development Program (UNDP), "the Capacity Building for Education and Human Resources Sector
Management", a support to the government, was eventually
converted into the “Program
to Rebuild Quality Education and Training in Cambodia”
through the government’s ratification at the National Education Seminar in
January 1994. Two review projects of the Asian Development Bank, Basic Education Investment Plan (1995-2000) and Education Investment
Plan were adopted by the government in December 1994 and were incorporated into the Cambodia’s First Socio-economic Development
Plan, 1996-2000. Furthermore, the government changed two major
policies to expand higher educational institutions in 1997.
First, the government
permitted public HEIs to provide classes based on private tuition fees for non-scholarship students in a limited number of institutions. In
addition, top government-supported scholarship students were recruited by the
Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports. Second, the government
allowed private sectors to be involved in Higher Educational investment (Pit, 2004). Virak highlighted (2009) that between 1989 and 1999,
2,170 Cambodian students were awarded
scholarships to study abroad, among them, 187 were female students. Records showed that 112
students went to Australia, 24 to Canada, 22 to
the Czech Republic, 32 to France, 148 to Germany, 4 to
Hungary, 20 to Indonesia, 142 to Japan, 10 to Laos, 12 to Poland, 769 to Russia, 34 to Thailand, 30 to USA, and 797 to Vietnam (Virak, 2009). Unfortunately, this coalition government broke up following a bloody coup on July 5-6, 1997. In brief, the development of Cambodian higher education in this period
was faced many problems in providing educational
services because of political instability and civil war.
2.7. Under the Hun Sen regime (1998-the present)
After the civil war was over, a new government was announced by
Prime Minister Hun Sen in 1998. Hun Sen
has ruled the country as Cambodian prime minister for three mandates of
government in 1998-2003, 2003-2008, and 2008-2013 respectively. Meanwhile, Cambodian higher education has been analyzed by different educational experts as “a cause for concern,”
“plagued with difficulty,” and “in a ferment of concern.” It reflects a number of problems with higher learning institutions: they are centrally supervised by the government ministries; they operate
with limited financial resources and are fraught with political interference without
transparency of academic recruitment, university leader appointment, and
program approval (Ford, 2006). Presently, there are 91 Cambodian higher education institutions,
which comprise 34 public and 57 private universities, in 19 provinces and
in Phnom Penh, the capital. Not
suprisingly, the expansion of higher education institutions is
reflected in the growth in the
number of enrollments. According to a report of the Ministry of Education, the total
annual registration rate has increased
dramatically to more than four times
from 41,000 to 173, 000 between 2003 and 2010, with approximately 91 percent of
fee-paying students in the public and private HEIs. In particular, in the academic year
2010-2011, there were 981
doctorate students, 12,887 master students, 173,264 undergraduate
students, and 20,719 associate students (MoEYS, 2011b). Due to the growth in number
of HEIs and enrolments, scholars describe
the Cambodian higher education landscape as undergoing a “silent revolution” (Rockefeller Foundation Supported
Project, 2006). Many private universities
have mushroomed to provide educational services throughout the country. Several
factors have been observed during the rapid
growth of private higher education institutions in this short period of time.
First, low salaries in the public
sector have led to the loss of more and
more government university lecturers to private institutions that offer
well-paid salaries. Second,
conflicting educational and political ideologies between young and old
Cambodian scholars have caused young scholars to switch to the private sector. Third, private higher education institutions
have striven to develop competitive
marketing strategies in producing human capital for the labor market after
Cambodia became a member of ASEAN in 1999 and the WTO in 2004 (Leng, 2010). Hence, there are five main
critical areas to be urgently reformed in order to effectively improve the educational quality for
Cambodian students and to ensure academic
success for Cambodian HEIs (Chealy,
2009).
2.8.1. Constraints of higher
education financing
Financing higher education is
virtually limited by the government's annual
budget. Overall, educational expenditure amounts
to 1.60% of the GDP while public higher education expenditure
receives only 0.05 % of
the GDP (WB, 2012). For example, government has been financing public higher education
institutions in the amount of 3, 0243.8
million Riels (approximately US$ 8 million) in 2011, and it will
be dramatically increased to 5, 4620.0 million Riels (approximately US$ 13 million) in 2012. A large portion of
the budget of Higher Education is spent on staff remuneration with a smaller portion on development
of other subsectors. Due to financial constraints and
lack of support, the government allows public HEIs to run private classes to generate tuition fees to support their institutional operation. There are two components
of the government budget to HEIs: the Recurrent Budget (RB), which covers salaries, utilities, water, and non salary expenditure, and the Program Budget (PB), which covers three subcomponents, i.e. Teachers,
students and institutional development.
Beside the government budget, many international partners and donors have a major role in supporting Cambodian HEIs. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank
(WB) are especially significant contributors who help
Cambodian Higher Education. For instance, ADB currently has a US$ 25 million project to assist
in improving the quality of
education. In this project, US$ 3 million is targeted
to support HEIs in three subcomponents, namely improving
the HR department,
strengthening the accreditation
mechanism, and improving the library of
the Royal University of Phnom Penh (ADB, 2010).
Furthermore, the World Bank has approved
a five year project from 2011 to 2014 to the
amount of US$ 23 million to support HEIs in the
following four main areas strengthening
the capacity of higher education system (1),
providing competitive development and innovation grants
(2), offering scholarships to disadvantaged students and project management
(3), and monitoring and
evaluating its project (4) (WB, 2011). Briefly, financing problems are certainly important factors that
affect the education quality in Cambodian tertiary
education.
Table 4: Financing plan for higher
education in Cambodia (MoEYS, 2011)
Cost in Riel Millions
|
|||||
Activities
|
2009
|
2010
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
Institutional support and operation
|
6,238.7
|
6,7524
|
2,9185.4
|
5,2708.3
|
7,8294.0
|
Monitoring and evaluation and quality
strengthening
|
256.3
|
233.6
|
1,058.4
|
1,911.7
|
2,842.0
|
Resources: Total
|
6,495.0
|
6,7757.6
|
3,0243.8
|
5,4620.0
|
8,1136.5
|
Source: Report on Goals of the Ministry of Education,
Youth, and Sports in Academic Year 2009-2011.
2.8.2. Admission requirements
Most Cambodian public and
private universities do not specify or stipulate admission requirements into their institutions.
They rely solely on the
results of the final national high school examinations. This means that students who
have completed six years of primary and six years of
secondary education with passing grades
and secondary school diplomas do not need to apply for admission in order to
enter tertiary educational
institutions. Prior
to 2002, similar to Soviet and European admission procedures to higher education, the government ministries prepared examinations to recruit the best candidates to enroll in the public higher educational institutions, but the private HEIs had already been setting their own entrance exams to recruit students under supervision by relevant ministries. Consequently, many public and private
universities have selected unqualified
students to attend their institutions.
Thus, educational quality suffers a negative impact caused by the search for commercial benefits. Therefore, admission
requirements cause controversial
problems, while human resources, teaching quality, and research capacity are also crucial problems in the current Cambodian HEIs.
2.8.3. Human resources, teaching
quality, and research capacity problems
The lack of human resources, teaching quality, and research capacity is also a
major problem. There are few full time academicians who hold PhD's in Cambodian
universities because of insufficient salaries and incentives. The monthly
salary together with basic salary, functional, and subsidiary allowances (risk
allowance, regional allowance, health risk allowance, pedagogic allowance, and
family allowance) for a fulltime
university lecturer can be as low as Riel 55, 0000 (approximately USD $130),
which is insufficient to meet the daily
expenses of a family (RGC, 2010), whereas overall academic average monthly salaries of some Asian
countries are much higher: they range from USD 1,182 in China, USD 1,547
in India, USD 2,568 in Australia, USD 3,107 in Malaysia, to USD 4,112 in Japan (Rumbley, 2008). Thus, public university
lecturers prefer to take up part-time
teaching at a number of academic institutions. Without adequate income from a normal teaching load, lecturers have to spend more
time on teaching to make a living, leaving no time to do research. In this context, Cambodia
needs qualified lecturers, educational experts, and policy makers to restore its system, but the lack of academic
professionalization criteria is not encouraging
people to work in academic institutions. According to the Cambodian Scientific
Department (2010), there are 1510 masters’
degree lecturers and 192 doctorates’ degree lecturers in private and public
HEIs nationwide. However, the Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE) and
the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), both prestigious universities and
member of ASEAN University Network, have only 7 and 16 PhD holders respectively
(MoEYS, 2011a). Most universities around
the world require their lecturers to fulfill
three basic functions: to upgrade the
quality of training, to do research, and to
provide consultation
services.
Conversely, Cambodian HEIs only
require their lecturers to upgrade their quality of training. Presently, research work suffers much
due to constraints of the government’s financial support and lack of human resources.
Some academic journals are being published by Cambodian higher education institutions. However, a
recent study of five prestigious Cambodian HEIs has found that “only 6 percent of university lecturers hold PhD’s
degrees and approximately 85 percent have never
published any academic or research papers (Chen, 2007). In conclusion, Cambodian higher education institutions need to
increase their human capital with highly qualified, experienced and professionally
skilled personnel to meet the minimum standards of
education quality. Academic relevance is also one of the factors that can allow students to select suitable majors to match
the needs of labor markets and society.
Table 5: Staff statistics by highest qualification in
top public universities
No.
|
Name
of Universities
|
Total Fulltime staff
|
Bachelor
Holder
|
Master Holder
|
PhD
Holder
|
1.
|
Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP)
|
460
|
2
|
262
|
16
|
2.
|
National University of Management (NUM)
|
83
|
0
|
58
|
14
|
3.
|
Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE)
|
111
|
0
|
77
|
7
|
4.
|
Chea Sim University of Komchaymea
(CSUK)
|
54
|
0
|
25
|
0
|
5.
|
University of Svay Rieng (USV)
|
73
|
0
|
55
|
0
|
6.
|
University of Battambong (UBB)
|
49
|
0
|
43
|
3
|
7.
|
Mean Chey University (MCU)
|
79
|
0
|
57
|
0
|
8.
|
National Institute of Education (NIE)
|
252
|
1
|
78
|
4
|
9.
|
Institute of Technology of Cambodia
(ITC)
|
155
|
1
|
71
|
16
|
Source: Education
Staff Statistics by Current Status, Cadre, Qualification and Age Group National
2010-2011, the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports.
2.8.4. Academic relevance
Relevant skills in universities
are not linked with the labour market.
The high rate of unemployment among the university graduates is partly due to
their lack of skills needed in the labour market. Public and Private HEIs are competing to
providing the same subjects in business studies, economics and IT. Currently, employment in these
areas is already fully saturated, while
science, mathematics, agriculture and health are areas with national needs yet to be filled by
skilled workers (Noch, 2009). In 2009, proximately 65,734
students (48 percent of total students) graduated
with a Major in Commerce. Business studies are
most popular among Cambodian students in both public and private universities
because students and their parents think that these
skills will allow them to find
well paid salary positions in modernized and comfortable offices. According to a
report of the Economic Institute of Cambodia (EIC), only 10 percent of the university graduates found jobs in 2007. However, the government fails to finance public universities to increase pure science majors enrollment because these majors require more spending of the
national budget on workshops, laboratories
and experiments. Moreover, the government still supports public universities to
offer academic curricula that are generally provided by private universities.
Therefore, it is evident that public
sectors are competing
commercially with private sectors within tertiary
education without making any effort to meet
social needs and economic growth of Cambodia as stipulated in the government’s
rectangular strategy (Chealy, 2009).
In short, Cambodian HEIs need to
expand their curricula and facilities to
provide a wide range of skills to link labor demands nationally
and internationally. However, university autonomy and academic freedom are a part of the current problem to improve the education quality in Cambodia.
2.8.5. Autonomy and academic freedom
The last problem is autonomy and
academic freedom within the public universities. Presently, public HEIs, which
are controlled by centralized ministry supervision, experience serious problems of underfunding and low salaries. According to (Chealy, 2009), Cambodian higher educational
institutions are divided into two
different categories namely, academic
and vocational institutions. Academic
institutions are supervised by the Ministry of
Education, Youth, and Sport (MoEYS) while vocational institutions
are under the supervision of the
Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training (MoLVT). In
addition, the Royal Academic of Cambodia (RAC), a
research institution supervised by the Council of Ministers, offers Master's and PhD’s programs to Cambodian students.
Hence, there are twelve
specialized ministries and agencies that provide higher education services in Cambodia including the
Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports (MoEYS),
the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training (MoLVT),
the Ministry of Health (MoH), the
Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoEF), the
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries
(MoAFF), the Ministry of Culture and
Fine Arts (MoCFA), the Ministry of National
Defence (MoND), the Ministry of Religious
Affairs (MoRA), the Ministry of Interior (MoI), the Ministry of Public Work and
Transportation (MoPWT), the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) and the Office of
the Council of Ministers (CoM) (UNESCO, 2006; Virak, 2010).
A few public universities are
given legal status as quasi-government institutions or
public administration institutions (PAIs). Political parties and parent ministries are actively
involved in making important decisions in
the administration of an HEI as well as nominating high academic ranking officers based
on political tendency rather than academic qualifications in Cambodian public
HEIs. For example, the presidents or rectors of public
universities are appointed by the
government without opening the positions to public competition and evaluation of academic experiences and competencies.
Cambodian HEIs are not mandated to
grant diplomas; only parent ministries
and agencies have absolute rights to issue, sign, and stamp on any
diploma; high ranking
government officers are cordially invited to preside in the graduation ceremony.
In the current
educational system, academic freedom is in
its infancy because the freedom of expression related to politics, human rights, democracy, corruption,
transparency, good governance, and social justice debates are banned within the HEIs. In addition, the government has imposed
regulations on HEIs advertising their
universities through mass media in order to maintain control over all
advertisements before reaching the public because experiences of misconduct of
some institutions in the past. Therefore, autonomy and academic freedom are
still controversial problems in the current
educational system caused by a legacy of communist
ideology in the past.
3. Conclusion
The
purpose of this paper is to examine the historical context of Cambodian higher
education development in seven different regimes from the
French protectorate and colonization period to the Hun Sen period. This paper
also provided a literature review of Cambodian traditional and modern education
system within the framework of the political tendencies and ideologies of
traditionalism, colonialism, Buddhist socialism, monarchy, republicanism,
Maoist communism, Vietnamese communism, and a hybrid democracy. In conclusion,
the discussion has suggested five main crucial problems of
the current Cambodian higher education institutions to
be urgently restored in
order to effectively enhance the educational quality and to integrate her system into the ASEAN community in
2015.
Acknowledgement
The first author would like to thank
Professor Dr. Roshada Hashim, Dean of the Institute of Postgraduate Studies and
Associate Professor Dr. Rozinah Jamaludin, the Centre for Instructional
Technology and Multimedia of the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for their kind
help and encouragement. This publication is supported by the USM PhD Fellowship
to the first author.
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