Higher Education Governance in Cambodia

For your convenience, all articles have already been organised by chapter and subchapter online at

www.lg-handbook.info. This article, E 2-13, has been assigned to:

Chapter E: Institutional Governance in National Contexts

Subchapter 2: Governance in Specific Higher Education Systems

Higher Education Governance in Cambodia

Leang Un

Say Sok

Content Page

1. Basic information 72

2. System level governance 76 2.1 Government structures 76 2.1.1 Competencies of the parliament 76 2.1.2 Competencies of the government 76 2.2 Other public structures and participation of stakeholders 78 2.2.1 Accreditation and Quality Assurance 78 2.2.2 Other Public Structures and Mechanisms 82 2.2.3 Other Stakeholder Structures and Participation in System Governance 83 2.3 Policy and Policy Instruments 85 2.3.1 The Constitution and Legislation 85 2.3.2 Policy on Higher Education 87 2.4 Public Funding of Teaching and Research 88

3. Institutional Level Governance 90

4. Upcoming HE Reforms 94

Leang UN, Say SOK

72 www.lg-handbook.info Leadership and Governance in Higher Education, Volume No. 4, 2014

1. Basic information

The development of higher education (HE) in Cambodia is relatively recent and uneven compared to other countries, even within Southeast Asia. It was not until the 1960s that the first modern university was established. Then the Democratic Kampuchea (DK), aka Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79), brought the sub-sector to ground zero – abolishing it altogether. At the DK demise, and once the new regime, i.e. the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979–1989), was estab-lished, the higher education sector was revived with support from the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. The Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy was the first higher education institution (HEI) to reopen in 1979, followed by Phnom Penh University and other specialised insti-tutes run by various related ministries.

Over the past 35 years, Cambodian higher education has undergone significant transformation, especially after the Cambodian political deadlock was resolved in the early 1990s. Before the late 1990s, high-er education was provided predominantly by the state and access was very low. Annually, the government granted about 2,000 scholarships; recently the figure has been around 4,000. In the early 1990s, devel-opment in higher education was mainly driven by foreign support, especially bilateral aid. Support focused on expansion of foreign (French and English) language training and research on reforms in education.1

Up until 1997, there were merely 8 public higher education institu-tions. In that year the state privatized higher education due largely to the higher education system inability to absorb the rapidly increasing number of high school graduates and the impact from the liberal mar-ket economy. Thus, the first private higher education institution was established. At the same time, the state permitted public higher educa-tion institutions to operate fee-paying programs as well, to generate income in order to supplement the limited support to higher education. The Faculty of Business and Management and Faculty of Law and Economics2 were among the first public higher education institutions to offer such programs.

1 See Patricia A Denham, Higher Education in Cambodia: Perspectives of an Australian Aid Project (Canberra: University of Canberra, 1997); David Sloper, Higher Education in Cambodia: The Social and Educational Context for Reconstruction (Bangkok: UNESCO, 1999). 2 At the time, the two faculties were under the umbrella of the Royal University of Phnom Penh. However, the former was transformed into the National Uni-versity of Management in 2004 and the latter into the Royal University of Law and Economics in 2003.


Leadership and Governance in Higher Education, Volume No. 4, 2014 www.lg-handbook.info 73

Since then the sector has been in its massification stage, both in terms of higher education institutions and student numbers. The number of institutions climbed drastically from 9 to 45, of which 32 were private, in 2005 and more than doubled to 1053, of which 66 are private, in 2014.4 The higher education landscape in Cambodia has transformed dramatically, moving from elite to mass access to higher education. The gross tertiary enrolment rate increased from around 1 % in the early 1990s to about 16 % currently. In absolute terms, between 1993–97, there was a total enrolment of slightly more than 10,000 students per annum. The number gradually increased, reaching more than 30,000 in 2005, a year when the enrolment rate started to surge quick-ly. In the academic year 2012–13, there were 255,791 students en-rolled in all higher education institutions across the country. Of these, 105,455 students (of whom 40,348 were female) were pursuing their education, ranging from associate to PhD degrees, in both scholarship and fee-paying programs in public higher education institutions, while the rest were studying in private higher education institutions, and only 1,063 were enrolled in PhD programs in 16 institutes. Despite the recent drastic rise in the student population, the tertiary enrolment rate in Cambodia is actually still much lower than in other countries in the region as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Gross tertiary enrolment rates5 in selected countries in the region

3 The above figures include both academic institutions and vocational/ technical training institutes. 4 Bunlay Nith and Leang Un, "Trends of Cambodian Higher Education Institution in Response to ASEAN Integration 2015," (Phnom Penh, 2014). 5 Percentage of higher education student enrolment against the 18–24 age cohort.

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Figure 2 Number of HEIs between 1980 and 2014 (Source: Un, Leang. Academic Promotion of Higher Education Teaching Personnel in Cambodia in ERI-Net Expert Meeting on Academic Promotion of Higher Edu-cation Teaching Personnel (Penang, Malaysia, 2014).)

Level

Number of students in 2012–2013

Number of graduates in 2011–2012

Total Female % of female

students Total Female

% of female students

Associate degree

23,678 7,944 33.55% 10,395 3,887 37.39%

Bachelor’s degree

216,053 86,235 39.91% 34,978 14,432 41.26%

Master’s degree

14,997 2,884 19.23% 1,296 367 28.32%

Doctoral degree

1,063 57 5.36% 34 1 2.94%

Total 255,791 97,120 37.97% 46,703 18,687 40.01%

Table 1 Number of Students Enrolled in 2012-2013 and Graduates in 2011-20126 (Source: Statistics from the Directorate General of Higher Education, 2014.)

6 An associate degree requires 2 years of study; a bachelor’s degree generally 4 years of study; a master’s degree 2 years of study, and a doctoral degree 4 years of study.



According to the statistics from 2014 Education Congress there are 10,842 lecturing staff – both Cambodians and foreigners – in higher education institutions, both public and private. in 2013.7 As seen in Table 2, the number of teaching staff with PhD degrees is very low. A majority of the staff hold master’s degrees, and those with bachelor’s degrees are considerable too, forming one-third of all the teaching staff. There is no break-down of staff statistics between private and public HEIs available. The figures below include both civil servants and on-contract teaching staff. For public higher education institu-tions, there are both civil servants and on-contract lecturers, while for private HEIs all teaching staff are on-contract. Statistics for the non-academic staff is not available.8 However, private HEIs are often able to employ full-time staff only for administration purposes while full-time teaching staff are limited.

Lec-turers

Academic Year 2011-2012 Academic Year 2012-2013

Ba-chelor’s Degree Holders

Master’s Degree Holders

PhD Degree Holders

Total

Ba-chelor’s Degree Holder

Master’s Degree Holders

PhD Degree Holders

Total

National Lecturers

3,439 6,027 700 10,166 3,470 6,032 700 10,202

Expatriate Lecturers

251 284 108 643 250 285 105 605

Total 3,690 6,311 808 10,809 6,317 6,317 805 10,842

Table 2 Number of Teaching Staff at Higher Education Level (Source: MoEYS. Education Congress (Phnom Penh: MoEYS, 2014), p. 42.)

The higher education sub-sector is divided into academic and voca-tional/technical training programs. In practice, the distinction is less clear; some vocational/technical higher education institutions even offer programs leading to master’s or PhD degrees too. Students’ hori-zontal mobility has been enhanced by the 2004 Decision on Credit and Credit Transfer Systems according to which the credit system is adopted and hence students’ credits can be transferred between differ-ent departments within a higher education institution or across institu-

7 There is very high repetition of names reported in this data as most of the teaching staff teach at more than one HEI. The unpublished survey conducted by DHE reveals that some of them even teach at as many as 4 HEIs. 8 To earn extra income, the majority of non-teaching staff are also involved in teaching, as teachers are paid according to teaching hours. The down-side of this is that not only the administrative support is ineffective, but also the quality of teaching is questionable.

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tions. In March 2014, the government issued the Sub-decree on the Cambodian National Qualifications Framework (CNQF). When fully implemented, it will further facilitate students’ horizontal and vertical mobility, given that it specifies alternative pathways to mobility and procedures and mechanisms for such mobility.

2. System level governance

2.1 Government structures

2.1.1 Competencies of the parliament

The legislature, comprising the Senate and National Assembly, is sup-ported by 9 commissions for specific social, economic, cultural and political aspects for each of the two bodies. The Commission on Edu-cation, Youth, Cults, Religion, Culture, Fine Arts and Tourism, known as Commission 7, assists the law-making bodies as regards education-al affairs. This includes, inter alia, providing recommendations and suggesting modifications to proposed/draft bills, inviting government agencies to clarify proposed/draft bills and collecting information on education.9 The legislature does not appoint or elect any structures that have competencies in higher education, and although the Constitution specifies that the Commission members have the authority to initiate bills, in reality the Commission’s main role is approval of and debates on proposed/draft bills, including the Law on Education. The actual performance of this Commission and the legislature more broadly is very limited in terms of both actively participating in designing the bills and monitoring their implementation (see the assessment of the National Assembly performance by such NGOs as COMFREL).

2.1.2 Competencies of the government

Higher education governance at the system level is very fragmented, and permanent coordination between different central agen-cies/ministries tasked with higher education governance is yet to be established. According to the 2007 Law on Education, the Supreme National Council of Education (SNCE) shall be established in order to ‘propose to the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) educational policies and long-term strategies that promote the national socio-economic development, and to assess the education and vocational/

9 Senate, "Decision on Roles, Duties and Competencies of the Commission on Education, Youth, Sport, Cults, Religion, Culture, Fine Arts and Tourism," (Phnom Penh: Senate, 2012).



technical training sectors’.10 However, at the time of the writing SNCE has not been established yet; hence there has been no formal perma-nent mechanism for overarching coordination. So far the Council of Ministers’ (CoM) meetings provide a platform for cross-sectoral co-operation and discussion. Apart from this, there are ad hoc inter-ministerial committees to discuss cross-sectoral issues too, but accord-ing to Vicheth Sen and Soveacha Ros, coordination and cooperation between the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS), espe-cially the Directorate General of Higher Education (DHE), and other ministries, are ‘limited to tasks such as selection of government-funded scholarship students, provision of technical assistance on some specific courses and some policy dialogue’.11

Currently, the governance of higher education institutions is in the authority of 14 different ministries/agencies, with the vast majority of them under the supervision of 2 important ministries – the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport and the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training (MoLVT). The MoEYS supervises the biggest number (65) of higher education institutions, whereas the MoLVT supervises 19. The rest thinly spread amongst other 12 ministries/agencies, including the National Bank of Cambodia, the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Energy, and the Ministry of Public Works and Transport.

According to the Sub-decree on the Organization and Functioning of the MoEYS, the ministry is mandated to, inter alia, formulate policies and plans to drive, monitor and evaluate the sub-sector, to improve higher education quality, to supervise higher education institutions under its jurisdiction, and to conduct research to improve the sub-sector. There is no separate ministry responsible for research and de-velopment. The MoEYS has one general directorate of higher educa-tion which consists of two departments, namely the Department of Scientific Research (DSR) and the Department of Higher Education. The DSR is responsible for scientific research, although research ac-tivities at the Department are limited in scope and number.12 The DSR is supposed to supervise and initiate research activities, but in practice it has carried out few research activities. Currently, the development and innovation grant unit, under the Higher Education Quality and Capacity Improvement Project supported by the World Bank and the Cambodian government, which aims to build and strengthen research culture in higher education institutions through provision of competi-tive research grants, is actually implemented under DHE and not DSR, although staff from the DSR participate in the development and inno-vation grant unit.

10 RGC, Law on Education (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2007). 11 Vicheth Sen and Soveacha Ros, Anatomy of Higher Education Governance in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: CDRI, 2013), p. 6. 12 See RGC, Sub-decree on the Organization and Functioning of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (Phnom Penh: RGC, 1998).

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In addition, the DHE and DSR, the ministry’s main arms responsible for higher education governance and management, are tasked with ensuring higher education quality improvement and institutional per-formance and with monitoring and evaluating the performance of higher education institutions, including their programs and curriculum development, and examinations and student selection at the associate and undergraduate and graduate level, respectively. Like all other state agencies, the DHE and DSR face some critical issues and challenges, including heavy responsibilities at the leadership level due partly to relatively dysfunctional support structure, fairly high staff absenteeism and low commitment to their careers, and limited financial re-sources.13

Recently, there is a discussion and an initiative led by the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Industry and Handicraft to establish a national council and a committee on science and technology responsi-ble for fostering the development of science and technology in Cam-bodia under the support of the Korean International Cooperation Agency.

2.2 Other public structures and participation of stakeholders

2.2.1 Accreditation and Quality Assurance

While the MoEYS is mandated to license HEI establishment and su-pervise public and private HEIs under its jurisdiction more broadly, the Accreditation Committee of Cambodia (ACC) was established in 2003 to ensure quality and accredit all HEIs. Attached to the CoM, the ACC plays the role of external quality assurance and accreditation and is responsible for ‘ensuring and promoting higher education quality’ to meet the regional and international standards and guaranteeing im-provement in institutional performance. The decree that establishes this body requires that only higher education institutions accredited by the ACC are entitled to confer bachelor’s, master’s and/or PhD degrees.14

13 HRINC, Higher Education and Skills for the Labor Market in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: HRINC, 2010), pp. 35-37; Visalsok Touch, Ngoy Mak, and Virak You, "Governance Reforms in Higher Education: A Study of Institutional Autonomy in Cambodia," in Governance Reform in Higher Education: A Study of Institutional Autonomy in Asian Countries, ed. NV Varghese and Michaela Martin (Paris: UNESCO, 2013), p. 55. 14 RGC, Royal Decree on Higher Education Accreditation (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2003). MoLVT has been preparing its own mechanisms and regulations to improve and ensure quality of HEIs under its jurisdiction too. See UNESCO, Policy Review of TVET in Cambodia (Paris: UNESCO, 2013).



After its creation, the national quality standards were introduced. This was to be achieved through, first the introduction of the Foundation Year Program in 2005 and the introduction of the 9 national minimum standards: mission, governing structure, management and planning, academic programs, academic staff, students and student services, learning services, physical plants, financial plan and management and dissemination of information in 2010 to assess HEIs and their academ-ic programs for accreditation.

According to the Sub-decree on the Organization and Functioning of the ACC General Secretariat, the secretariat has many important mis-sions, including:

1. To prepare accreditation policy and take necessary measures to ensure education quality;

2. To prepare and improve minimum standards to ensure higher edu-cation quality;

3. To examine, monitor and evaluate HEI institutional management and academic programs;

4. To propose HEI accreditation to the ACC for approval;

5. To propose foundation year program accreditation to the ACC for approval;

6. To propose HEI accreditation rating to the ACC for approval;

7. To ensure proper participation from relevant stakeholders con-cerned with outcome of each HEI which applies for accreditation; and

8. To publicly disseminate the ACC’s findings on accreditation.15

Cambodia’s HEI accreditation is still nascent and immature. Chealy Chet correctly notes that ‘ACC, the central player in guaranteeing quality assurance, is younger than most of the Cambodian higher edu-cation institutions’.16 General perception towards the ACC as an ex-ternal quality guarantor is quite pessimistic, although this body is led by qualified individuals and should be credited for accrediting the foundation year programs of almost all higher education institutions and has managed to downgrade some universities and institutes which did not meet its minimum standards to schools or centres and close

15 RGC, Sub-decree on the Organization and Functioning of the ACC Secretariat (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2003). 16 Chealy Chet, "Cambodia," in Higher Education in Southeast Asia (Bangkok: UNESCO, 2006).

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some disqualified HEIs altogether. Yet its ability and capacity as a quality assurance guarantor have been legitimately questioned. Some question its independence from political interference; others see it as a body with little professional experience in accreditation and staffed with less experienced staff and assessors or criticize its ‘very complex and bureaucratic’ application procedure.17

The ACC has currently employed over 200 on-contract assessors with a two-year term, and they can reapply for the positions should they want a renewal. After being employed, assessors are trained on as-sessment standards and guidelines. Although all assessors must hold a master’s degree, which seems to make them qualified, there are doubts about credibility of some assessors’ capacity. Some assessors are not even involved in the university or academic society, therefore, are not able to perform the job well. An informal conversation with people who are close to the work of the ACC reveals that some assessors do not even know whom to ask questions and some do not even ask ques-tions at all during the assessment missions. In this sense, there is a clear need to review the criteria for assessor-ship and to improve ac-creditation training programs. The formal qualification for assessors should be lifted from a master’s to PhD degree or individuals who hold senior positions and have experience in university management and academic society. The process of reapplying to become assessors should take into account how they continue to actively involve them-selves in the program related to the assessment. The training program should not be limited to standards and guidelines only but extended to concepts and theories behind each of the standards and should expose assessors to regional and international practices.

Although the effectiveness of the accreditation process depends in part on the leadership and management of the ACC secretariat, the core team is its more than 200 on-contract assessors. More than 10 years after its existence, it has yet to grant full accreditation to a single insti-tution and it ‘does not seem to have made any change to public per-ceptions of the quality of HE’, let alone bringing the Cambodian high-er education sub-sector on par with the regional standard.18 After 11 years, most institutions that have received ACC accreditation only have their foundation year programs, not the entire institutions, ac-credited. After 3 years of issuing the 9 minimum standards, only 5 out of 105 HEIs have applied for institutional assessment, and none are from the commonly known top HEIs, either public or private. By 2013, only 4 universities had received provisional accreditation certif-icates (2 are private, 1 under the MoEYS and 1 under the Ministry of

17 See, for example, David Ford, "Cambodian Higher Education–Growing Pains," International Higher Education 44 (2006); Sen and Ros, Anatomy of Higher Education; Moniroith Vann, "Stakeholders’ Perceptions of Quality in Cambodian Higher Education" (RMIT University, 2012). 18 Sen and Ros, Anatomy of Higher Education, p. 7.



Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF)) and 1 university applied for a candidacy accreditation (under the Ministry of Defence). Ana-lyses of the few evaluation reports reveal that its evaluation is some-times not precise and very descriptive in nature. Further, not only the quality of assessment is relatively poor, there are varied qualities of assessment reports among the five.

This uneven adherence to accreditation requirements has led to con-cerns that not only the rights of students to have access to quality edu-cation, as well as the separate issue of public accountability, has not yet been materialized, but also to the question of how independent this agency is. This could also indicate ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the ACC. The shortage of strong institutions and competent agents to implement policies effectively are well acknowledged in many gov-ernment development plans and policies. Generally, this issue is at-tributed to the lack of human resources and incentive schemes; how-ever, this is not applicable to the case of the ACC which has a separate annual operation budget and external support and revenues generated from its services to HEIs. The problem partly lies in the fact that there is no clear and rigorous recruitment policy. The slow progress may be attributed to several other factors such as complex indicators used for assessment (more than 200 indicators are used for institutional accred-itation and many are hardly measurable in concrete terms) and the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of ACC services to HEIs.

In response to this phenomenon, on October 30, 2013, through a royal decree the government decided to integrate the ACC secretariat to the MoEYS. Subsequently, on October 31, 2013, a sub-decree and a di-rective on the implementation of the decree and sub-decree on trans-ferring and integrating the work of some state institutions were issued. During the last couple of months, meetings and discussions on the future of the ACC and whether the 9 minimum standards should be revised have been on-going.

In additional to external quality assurance, the Decree on Higher Edu-cation Accreditation obliges each HEI to establish its internal quality assurance units (IQAUs) to conduct regular internal quality self-assessment to improve its educational quality. Only few HEIs, includ-ing the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), Norton University, Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia, Build Bright University and others, have established their own IQAUs. Stakeholders whom Vann Moniroith interviewed expressed their support towards IQAUs as a mechanism to ensure quality, but they are concerned with IQAUs’ limited experience in handling self-assessment, since IQAUs are usu-ally staffed with teaching staff with little knowledge of quality assur-

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ance and accreditation and perhaps established to merely meet the government’s requirement.19

Cambodia also attempts to have some of its higher education institu-tions and their academic programs accredited by the regional body through the ASEAN University Network (AUN), a network of 30 universities in the region. So far, only the Royal University of Law and Economics and RUPP have AUN full membership, but they are yet to have their programs and institutions assessed and accredited by AUN. The National University of Management has recently sought membership in this regional network too.

2.2.2 Other Public Structures and Mechanisms

There are some other public structures and mechanisms for quality assurance and system level coordination too. In October 2004, ACC issued a Decision on Credit and Credit Transfer Systems, which pro-vides a framework for more flexible study, including on the part-time basis, and student transfer from one institution to another. In March 2014, the government passed the Cambodian National Qualifications Framework (CNQF) covering both academic and vocational/technical training. The sub-decree divides higher education into 8 different lev-els. When fully operational, it will ease credit transfer between aca-demic and vocational/technical higher education institutions, create a mechanism for recognition of prior learning and enhance life-long learning through establishing pathways from one level to the next.

The 2007 Law on Education stipulates that the Supreme National Council of Education (SNCE), directly under the Cabinet of the Prime Minister, shall be created. This body is yet to be established, and per-haps its existence may ensure and promote coordination and coopera-tion amongst ministries/agencies responsible for education, training and industry.

During the pre-war period Cambodia adopted the professorship sys-tem, but this ceased to exist during the inter-war period. In 2010-11, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and the Ministry of Health (MoH) pushed for the issuance of sub-decrees on academic promotion in their respective fields. As a result, some of their senior staff, including those of the Royal University of Agricul-ture (RUA) and University of Health Sciences (UHS), were appointed professors. In 2011, the MoEYS pushed for academic promotion too and sent a draft policy to the CoM, which returned it to the MoEYS and requested it to prepare policy on academic promotion in all fields

19 Vann, "Stakeholders’ Perceptions of Quality", especially Chapters 6 & 7.



of study, and this culminated in the promulgation of the Royal Decree on Professorial Ranking in January 2013.

Unlike practices in some countries in the region, the process of grant-ing and assessment of professorship under the existing decree is very centralized in Cambodia. The decree determines the criteria for each rank of professorship and mandates the creation of the National Coun-cil for Granting Professorship (NCP) to approve this ranking. The NCP shall be led by a deputy prime minister and be composed as fol-lows:

1. A deputy prime minister (chair)

2. The Minister of MoEYS (permanent vice chair)

3. A Secretary of State from CoM (Vice chair)

4. A Secretary of State from MoEYS (Vice chair)

5. A Secretary of State from MoLVT (Vice chair)

6. Two representatives from concerned ministries/agencies (members)

7. Three professor representatives from concerned disciplines (nominated by concerned ministries/agencies) (members)

The day-to-day operation of the NCP shall be done by its secretariat. The NCP will be located in the MoEYS and led by a secretariat gen-eral and a few deputies, and shall be assisted by a few specialized commissions. Applicants who wish to become professors (ranging from assistant to full professor) shall apply to the NCP for assessment. The NCP shall then prepare an assessment committee comprising individuals from higher education institutions of the concerned minis-tries/agencies in order to assess the applicants’ eligibility once a year. The assessment committees shall forward their assessment results to the NCP for final approval. However, currently the new minister of education, who came into the leadership in late 2013, suggested that the process should be carried out by individual HEIs. Until today, there has been no individual HEI that has adopted the policy on pro-fessorship yet.

2.2.3 Other Stakeholder Structures and Participation in System Governance

Due to the entrenched history of centralization and top-down decision-making and the influence of the neo-liberal order, higher education system level governance is generally perceived to be the responsibility of parent ministries/agencies and shaped partly by foreign ‘develop-ment partners’. Participation from non-state stakeholders is quite lim-ited. Nevertheless, some mechanisms that allow for their participation

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exist. The Education Sector Technical Working Group provides a broad policy dialogue and information sharing forum for relevant stakeholders, including international/local NGOs working on educa-tion. The recent establishment of the Sub-Sector Technical Working Group on Higher Education (TWG-HE) has further shaped participa-tion from non-state stakeholders. It provides a regular platform for policy dialogue and information sharing between the MoEYS, espe-cially the DHE, other government agencies responsible for education and training, local and international NGOs/institutions working on higher education, university representatives such as the Cambodian Higher Education Association (CHEA) and the private sector.

The CHEA, established in 2004 as a non-governmental body, is the sole private higher education association in Cambodia. In its first mandate the association had only 13 members, and in this third man-date the membership has increased to 42. The Association envisions strengthening higher education quality, particularly of the private higher education institutions, through exchange of information and ideas, and promoting its members’ interests.20 As discussed earlier, a CHEA representative is often invited to higher education meetings organized by the DHE or the MoEYS.

Other important student and teacher bodies include the Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association (CITA) and HEI-based student as-sociations. Unlike CHEA their participation in the system level gov-ernance is even more limited. CITA was created in 2000 and formally recognized in 2001. It claims to have over 9,000 members and, unlike CHEA, works mostly on advocacy and awareness raising and on a wider range of issues rather than specifically on higher education.21 Generally, there is one relatively inclusive student association at indi-vidual institutions, especially public HEIs, established mainly for in-formation sharing amongst students and promotion of students’ social participation and community services, and it is not customary for Cambodian student associations to participate in system level govern-ance, not even institutional level governance. Such a student associa-tion is run by a student body, which is elected by students or student representatives from the respective higher education institution.

20 For details, see http://www.chea.edu.kh/cheakhm/ as of 13 June, 2014. 21 For details, see http://www.cita.org.kh/english/index.html as of 13 June, 2014.



2.3 Policy and Policy Instruments

2.3.1 The Constitution and Legislation

Although the Constitution contains a chapter on education, culture and social affairs it does not directly specify anything about higher educa-tion or its governance. Three articles that have some relevance here are Articles 65, 66 and 67. The first article states that “The State shall protect and promote the right of the citizen to a quality education at all levels and shall take every measure to progressively make this educa-tion available to all the citizens.” The other two are about system level governance more broadly. According to Article 66, ‘[t]he State shall establish a comprehensive and unified system of education throughout the country, capable of guaranteeing the principles of freedom of edu-cation and equal access to schooling.” Article 67 entrusts with the state the privilege to ‘oversee public and private education establish-ments and classes at all cycles’.22

Cambodia does not have a recent history of having exhaustive legisla-tion, perhaps with the exception of the more encompassing civil and criminal codes. Laws are usually short and lack operational details, leaving these to royal decrees, prime ministerial sub-decrees, ministe-rial prakas (edicts), circulars, decisions and/or guidelines. This too applies to the 2007 Law on Education. Unlike some other countries in the region, Cambodia does not have a separate law governing the sub-sector and higher education regulations are scattered throughout the law. More importantly higher education is governed by a range of sub-laws on education and technical/vocational training. Besides the law, other sub-laws of relevance include:

1. Sub-decree on Establishment and Management of Higher and Technical Education Institutions (1992)

2. Royal Decree on Legal Statute of Public Administrative Institu-tions (PAI) (1997)

3. Sub-decree on Criteria for University Establishment (2002)

4. Royal Decree on Public Universities (2002)

5. Prakas on Master’s Degree Education (2003)

6. Royal Decree on HE Accreditation (2003)

7. Sub-decree on Preparation and Functioning of ACC (2003)

8. Decision on Credit and Credit Transfer Systems (2004)

22 RGC, "Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia," (Phnom Penh: RGC, 1993).

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9. Decision on Requirements for Issuance of Foundation Year Certifi-cates at HEIs (2004)

10. Prakas on Conditions and Detailed Criteria for HEI Licensing (2007)

11. Sub-decree on Preparation and Functioning of MoEYS (2009)

12. Sub-decree on PhD Education (2010)

13. Royal Decree on Professorial Ranking (2013)

14. Sub-decree on Cambodian National Qualification Framework (2014)

While the law provides a general framework and provision for higher education, these sub-laws provide operational details and/or guide-lines. The decrees on public universities and on legal statute of public administrative institutions and prakas on conditions and detailed crite-ria for higher education institution licencing, for example, detail the institutional arrangements within the institutions and internal and ex-ternal accountability mechanisms, including how the institutions are accountable to their parent ministries. Quality assurance and accredita-tion are dealt with in detail in the decrees on accreditation, credits and credit transfer, and the qualifications framework. Apart from the im-portant sub-laws listed above, there are other ad hoc circulars and guidelines covering a range of issues, including student selection, students’ final year examination and criteria for graduation.

1 Goals, aims, principles of HE Yes The law covers these issues at the frame-work level, leaving procedural details and guidelines to relevant sub-laws.

2 System level governance Yes

3 Autonomy and academic free-dom

Yes

4 Types of HEI Yes

5 Internal governance structure of HEI

Yes

6 Quality assurance and accredi-tation

Yes

7 Financing Yes

8 Selection of students Yes

9 Selection, appointment and promotion of staff

Yes

10 Structure of study programmes Yes

Table 3 Issues Covered in the Law on Education



2.3.2 Policy on Higher Education

Higher education forms an integral part of various national develop-ment plans, including the succinct five-year Rectangular Strategy for Growth, Employment, Equity and Efficiency: Phase III (alias Rectan-gular Strategy) and the upcoming more comprehensive National Stra-tegic Development Plans (NSDP) 2014-18. The Rectangular Strategy outlines the four main pillars of reforms, all in the direction of more open, accountable, transparent, responsive and participatory politics and administration (i.e. the core of these reforms is ‘good govern-ance’) which the 5th mandate of the government shall implement in order to achieve its development goals. The development of high qual-ity and efficient human resources through provision of quality educa-tion and training, development of the necessary legal and policy frameworks, establishment of HEIs and oversight agencies, and pro-motion of science, technology and vocational and technical education constitute its 4th angle. Given that previous governments concentrated more on building physical infrastructure, water and electricity (hard infrastructure), this current strategy underscores the importance of building ‘human capital’ to better prepare Cambodia for the upcoming regional integration, and recognizes institutional decentralisation and deconcentration and capable oversight institutions as major mecha-nisms to achieve the goal.23

The NSDP, derived from the Rectangular Strategy, covers these areas of reforms in much more detail. Besides presenting the achievements and challenges in implementing the previous mandate’s development plan and the current macroeconomic framework, the policy lays out policy actions to be taken; policy priorities in each reform area and sub-area for the current mandate; planned programmes and projects that relevant ministries/agencies shall implement to achieve the reform goals; estimates of the cost and resource allocations; potential funding sources; necessary institutional arrangements to achieve the goals and objectives; monitoring and evaluation, and performance indica-tors/targets.24

At ministerial level, higher education forms a key part of the MoEYS’s five-year Educational Strategic Plan (ESP) 2014–18. It was not until early 2014 that the country first adopted its Policy on Higher Education Vision 2030, which deals exclusively with higher education development. Both policy documents identify the issues and challeng-es stakeholders face in the sub-sector and pinpoint the policy aims/objectives; policy actions and strategies, and measurable indica-tors/targets to gauge the sub-sector development. The 2030 policy

23 For details, see Rectangular Strategy for Growth, Employment, Equity and Efficiency: Phase 3 (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2014). 24 For details, see ———, National Strategic Development Plan Update 2010-2013 (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2010).

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clearly spells out the vision for the sub-sector as ‘[t]o build a quality higher education system that develops human resource with excellent knowledge, skills and moral values in order to work and live within the era of globalization and knowledge-based society’. The three main areas both policy papers aim to address are higher education access and equity, quality, and governance and management.

The policy documents identify a number of areas where action needs to be taken: inequitable access from certain groups like female stu-dents and poor families; skills mismatch; missing/incomplete links between key actors; poor quality of higher education; limited research culture at the higher education institutions; lack of information on the current human resources and the human resources needs of the sub-sector, and rigid institutional governance and management as bottle-necks to improving the sub-sector, to mention but a few. Therefore, preparation of policies on enhancement of equitable access, human resource development, improvement in the higher education manage-ment information system, strengthening research and development, and institutional governance and financial management, as well as a guideline on higher education institutions’ internal quality assurance, are identified as key to remedy these shortcomings. The 2030 vision-ary policy also briefly describes the roles and responsibilities of rele-vant mechanisms and actors such as the SNCE, the TWG-HE, imple-menting ministries and institutes, and legal frameworks.25

2.4 Public Funding of Teaching and Research

Education is identified as one of the eight priority sectors; yet this does not necessarily translate into sizeable funding, despite slight funding increases over the years. According to a draft policy paper on higher education financing, in 2012 the expenditure for the MoEYS accounted for only 1.8 % of the Gross Domestic Products (GDP), and the budget for higher education in particular accounted for 0.1 % of the GDP or 4.1 % of the total MoEYS budget. While all public higher education institutions receive government support, this does not ex-tend to private ones. Broadly speaking, there are two components of budget support: the recurrent budget support to cover such items as civil servants’ salaries, utility fees and some other non-salary expendi-ture, and the result-oriented, program-based budget support to support activities that improve quality of learning and teaching and institu-tional development in general.26 In addition to the government’s budg-

25 For details see MoEYS, "Education Strategic Plan 2014-2018," (Phnom Penh: MoEYS, 2014); ———, "Policy on Higher Education Vision 2030," (Phnom Penh: MoEYS, 2014). 26 Rany Sam, Ahmad Nurulazam MD Zain, and Hazri Jamil, "Cambodia’s Higher Education Development in Historical Perspectives (1863-2012)," International Journal of Learning and Development 2, no. 2 (2012), pp. 234-235.



et support, public higher education institutions are allowed to offer fee-paying programs to offset the meagre support from the govern-ment. Since 1997 public institutions have been allowed to charge fees to fee-paying students in order to supplement staff salaries and fund institutional development.

Public funding for research to higher education institutions is ‘relatively non-existent’. So is government-commissioned or initiated research.27 Some government policy research is conducted by the in-house Su-preme National Economic Council. Research is carried out by some prominent local not-for-profit research institutions such as the Cambo-dia Development Resource Institute and the Center for Khmer Studies as well. Private higher education institution funding of research by the institutions themselves is likewise ‘almost completely absent’. The in-stitutional funding allocations of public institutions to research are simi-larly minimal. Some prominent higher education institutions such as the Royal University of Phnom Penh, the Royal University of Agriculture, the University of Health Sciences, and the Institute of Technology of Cambodia have received substantial research grants from their partners to conduct project-based research, or through calls for proposals. How-ever, the overall amount of funding is not known, and there is no over-arching research guideline or policy for such funding.28

The sub-sector has recently received funding to improve teaching and research from Cambodia’s development partners such as the Asian De-velopment Bank and World Bank. In 2010 the latter approved the 23-million-dollars Higher Education Quality and Capacity Improvement Project 2011-2015 for this purpose. Two of the four project sub-components are: provision of scholarships for disadvantaged students whose selection is based on ‘pro-poor targeting and educational criteria’ in order to pursue higher education studies at local higher education institutions,, and provision of competitive development and innovation block grants to higher education institutions. More than 5 million dol-lars are earmarked for the research and innovation sub-component. The grants are awarded to those institutions, including private ones, with the most competitive proposals, after rigorous rounds of application screen-ing and reviews. The project has also managed to send 70 fellows to pursue their master’s and PhD degrees in Australia.29

27 In 2010, the government adopted the Policy on Research Development in the Education Sector and in 2011, the Master Plan for Research Development in the Education Sector was adopted, although no funding was available for HEIs to conduct research and innovation. 28 Kian-Woon Kwok et al., Scoping Study: Research Capacities of Cambodia’s Universities (Phnom Penh: DRF in Cambodia, 2010), p. 31. 29 For a project brief, see http://www.moeys.gov.kh/en/heqcip.html as of 20 June, 2014.

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3. Institutional Level Governance

According to the Prakas on Conditions and Detailed Criteria on Li-cencing higher education institutions, the highest governing body at the institutional level is the board of directors (BoD). Each public, PAI and private higher education institution shall be governed by a BoD, although the composition differs slightly. The prakas stipulates that public higher education institution BoDs shall conform to the re-quirements in the Royal Decree on the Legal Statutes of Public Ad-ministrative Institutions. Yet, according to another decree, i.e. the Royal Decree on Public University, the BoD composition of a public university shall be made up of representatives from the concerned public university academic community and from outside its communi-ty. It shall comprise:

1. The Rector of the public university (who serves as the chairperson)

2. One representative from the MoEYS

3. One representative from the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF)

4. One representative from the Office of the CoM

5. Four deans of dependent colleges/faculties or directors of technical HEIs (elected by academic staff of the concerned colleges/faculties or technical institutes, respectively)

6. One person from outside the university community (as stated in the sub-decree on the creation of the public university in question)

7. One representative of lecturing staff (elected by lecturing staff in accordance with the internal rules and regulations)

8. One representative of administrative staff (elected by administra-tive staff in accordance with the internal rules and regulations)

9. One representative of students (elected by students in accordance with the internal rules and regulations)30

The decree does not stipulate the term limit of a public university BoD. As seen above, since the rector serves as the chairperson of the board, he/she shall be its member automatically. Staff and student representatives are elected by university staff and students, respective-ly, and the other members are appointed by their parent ministries, accordingly. In real practice, some public higher education institutions are run by the rector, assisted by a few vice rectors, with no formal

30 RGC, Royal Decree on Creation of Public Universities (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2002).



board in place, and the rector ‘acts [both] as a policy maker and policy implementor’.31

With the intent to provide more institutional autonomy to public high-er education institutions and to relieve the state from some financial burden, selected public higher education institutions have been trans-formed to PAI HEIs based on the Royal Decree on the Legal Statute of Public Administrative Institutions. As of 2010, 10 HEIs were granted the PAI status.32 The decree, which governs the operation and man-agement of PAI HEIs, requires that each PAI HEI shall be governed by a board which shall comprise 5-11 members. Five core members are one representative from a parent ministry; one MEF representative; one representative from the Office of CoM; the rector, and one repre-sentative of university staff (elected by university staff and with auto-matic membership).

The other members, if any, shall be listed in the sub-decree on the establishment of each individual PAI HEI. Besides the automatic member whose term begins once elected and ends once the member-ship is over, the other members shall be nominated by the concerned ministries/agencies and signed off by sub-decrees. The membership shall last for 3 years with possible renewal.33 In practice, Visalsok Touch and others observe that the PAI HEI board composition is gen-erally small and representatives from some important sectors such as students and industries are absent or minimal, as many PAI HEIs choose only to meet the minimum membership requirements.34

The Prakas on Conditions and Detailed Criteria for Establishing HEIs states that a private HEI’s board shall make up of at least 5 members and compose, at the minimum, of shareholders or representatives, dignitaries in education, politics and economy, and administra-tive/academic staff representatives.35 Students are thus not included in private HEIs’ boards. The prakas does not regulate the lengths and term limits of private HEIs’ board members, but according to the Min-imum Standards for Accreditation of HEIs the term length is 3 years, although in practice there is a slight variation in lengths. Neither does the prakas regulate how the board members shall be selected or elect-

31 Ngoy Mak, "Higher Education in Cambodia-University Governance," in University Governance in Higher Education in Southeast Asian Countries (Luang Prabang, Laos, 2008). 32 For the effectiveness of and challenges in implementing this decree, see Touch, Mak, and You, "Governance Reforms in Higher Education." 33 RGC, Royal Decree on Legal Status of Public Administrative Institutions (Phnom Penh: RGC, 1997). 34 For details, see Touch, Mak, and You, "Governance Reforms in Higher Education." ITC has the most and most diverse board members in terms of affiliations. See Rotha Chan et al., Directory of Higher Education Institutions in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (Phnom Penh: Camprobe, 2008). 35 RGC, "Prakas on Conditions and Detailed Criteria for HEI Licensing," (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2007).

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ed; the Minimum Standards just requires that the recruitment and se-lection processes shall be transparent.36 The only stipulation is that the concerned higher education institutions shall inform the MoEYS if there is any change or modification to their board composition.

The competencies of public, PAI and private HEI boards are stipulated in the Royal Decree on Public University Establishment, the Royal Decree on the Legal Status of Public Administrative Institutions, and ACC’s Minimum Standards for Accreditation, respectively, and there is a slight variation in their roles and responsibilities. Many roles and responsibilities are common, though. The board is entrusted with the capacities to set policy and direction for the higher education institu-tion in question; to define the institution’s organizational structure and roles and the responsibilities of subordinate units; to determine and approve the number of staff; to approve budget plans and financial reports/statements; to approve procurement; to decide on internal rules and regulations, and to determine staff recruitment process, promotion and incentive provision.37

The higher education institution leadership is made up of the rector (for a university) or director (for an institute) and is supported by the ‘necessary’ number of vice rectors/directors. Procedures to select and appoint the rector/director and vice-rectors/deputy directors for public, PAI and private higher education institutions differ considerably. A public HEI rector is proposed by the parent ministry to the prime min-ister and is appointed via a royal decree. Vice rectors (and deans) are proposed by the parent ministry to the prime minister and appointed by sub-decrees. A PAI HEI rector is likewise proposed by the parent ministry to the prime minister and appointed by a royal decree too. After the appointment, the rector then nominates his/her vice rectors, and the candidates shall be proposed to the board for approval. As for private higher education institutions, the recruitment, appointment and termination of a rector/director shall be at the discretion of the board, while the rector shall nominate vice-rectors/directors or propose the termination of their term to the board for consideration. The law does not set the term length of rector-ship or a limit to rectorship terms.

Again like in the case of institution boards, the roles and responsibili-ties of public, PAI and private higher education institution rec-tors/directors are slightly different, but they also share many common roles and responsibilities. The major common ones include managing the institution on a day-to-day basis; implementing decisions made by the board; preparing policies, financial statements, activity and annual

36 Human Resource University, for example, sets the term at 3 years, and University of Southeast Asia at 4 years. ACC, Minimum Standards for Accreditation of Higher Education Institutions (Phnom Penh: ACC, 2009). 37 For more details, see ibid; RGC, Sub-decree on Establishment of University of Health Sciences as Public Administrative Institute (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2001); ———, Royal Decree on Creation of Public Universities.



budget plans to be submitted to the board for approval, and nominat-ing vice deans, heads of departments and heads of offices to the parent ministry for approval (for public universities) or vice rectors down-wards to the board for approval (for private universities).38

By law, each higher education institution shall have its own internal rules and regulations and management procedures and structures, and the law does not restrict how these shall be arranged. Thus, there is a slight variation in the division of roles and responsibilities and degrees of autonomy that the subordinate bodies of an institution are granted. The Decree on Public University states that a dependent facul-ty/college and higher education technical institution has the ‘scientific and pedagogical autonomy in the framework and under the monitoring of the public university to which it is dependent’ and has its own budget in the overall budget of the public university and its own, au-tonomous management body too. As regards PAI HEIs, they -and even their departments- are granted more decentralized authority, including curriculum development and staff promotion. The law does not regu-late the autonomy of the subordinate bodies of a private institution and merely proposes that there shall be a clear role and responsibility divi-sion among different levels of the governance structure within a high-er education institution.39

In reality, there is substantial variation in higher education institutional governance, including (de)centralization of authority and institutional autonomy – administrative, academic and financial. According to a survey of 54 higher education institutions in 2012, for example, the lowest level in a higher education institution (both public and private) that can make decisions on academic affairs, hiring/firing (non-) academic staff and financial management can be the board of directors, rector/director, dean or even head of a department. There is a clear tendency towards centralization in staff and financial management as a majority of institutions report that decisions on these matters lie in the hands of the board of directors or the rector/director of an institution, while decisions on academic affairs are more decentralized. The au-thors’ experiences seem to confirm these institutional practices and variations and suggest that occasionally there is a tendency in consen-sus decision making as well, but limited to non-financial issues.

38 For more details, see ACC, Minimum Standards for Accreditation; RGC, Sub-decree on Establishment of University of Health Sciences; ———, Royal Decree on Creation of Public Universities. 39 ———, Royal Decree on Public University (Phnom Penh: RGC, 2002), pp. 2-4; Touch, Mak, and You, "Governance Reforms in Higher Education", pp. 63-66.

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4. Upcoming HE Reforms

Since the July 2013 general elections, the government has expressed its intention to deepen the higher education reforms to better prepare Cambodia for the upcoming ASEAN Economic Community estab-lishment in 2015. Upon his appointment in 2013, the new minister of the MoEYS, known for his reform-mindedness, has initiated the high-er education reform known informally as Draft Policy Paper No 1: Higher Education Reform in Cambodia. The policy briefly presents issues and challenges the sub-sector faces and outlines the short and medium-term measures that will be implemented in order to remedy them. The measures aim, inter alia, to clarify institutional autonomy and accountability; support research and innovation at the institutional level; improve secondary-higher education relations with the intention to better prepare high school graduates for post-secondary education; increase the number of students pursuing STEAM (science, technolo-gy, engineering, creative arts, and mathematics) majors and improve the quality of STEAM majors; improve HEI-industry linkages to min-imize skill mismatch and increase graduate employability, and attract and maintain competent HEI staff. It is important to note that the Cambodian government has planned in 2015 to provide national re-search grants to universities to build and strengthen their research and innovation capacity. Also at the ministry level, the education research council which serves as the Think Tank for the MoEYS was estab-lished in late September 2014 to promote insightful thinking and in-novative ideas in the education sector.

Biographies:

Leang Un, PhD, graduated in Social and Behavioural Science from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Currently, he is a deputy director of the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, and chief of the Innovative and Development Grants of the Higher Education Quality and Capacity Improvement Project, co-funded by the Government of Cambodia and the World Bank. In addition to his administrative role, his research interests and publications focus on education policy and the contribution of education to the development after the post-conflict period.

Say Sok, PhD, graduated from Deakin University Australia with a PhD in Political Science, majoring in political economy and resource governance. Besides working as a part-time lecturer, he is currently serving as a national technical advisor on HE governance and management to the Higher Education Quality and Capacity Improvement Project, co-funded by the Government of Cambodia and the World Bank. He has published on education, resource governnace, state-society relations, political economy, and media and communication.

Higher Education Governance in Cambodia

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