Stakeholders' perceptions of quality in Cambodian higher education
Creators: name: Vann, Moniroith
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: In recent years, many developing nations have followed their developed counterparts in adopting quality assurance systems to improve the quality of their higher education, as they also now need a highly skilled workforce to thrive in the emerging knowledge-based economy. Cambodia, a developing country which has experienced a civil war and uneven social, political and ideological changes since it claimed independence from France in 1953, has for the past ten years had a focus on the improvement of the quality of higher education on which Cambodia’s economy and future development goals mainly depend. Since the 2000s, Cambodia has seen a dramatic increase in the number and size of higher education institutions, reaching towards the stage of massification after almost three decades of political unrest. Some view this increase in the scale of higher education as a great achievement for Cambodia, having significantly widened access for students who wish to pursue their studies in higher education. However, some critics describe some higher education institutions in Cambodia as little more than certificate shops or diploma mills as their outputs are poor and they do not meet the national needs for the development of skills. <br><br>In response to both the government’s efforts to improve the quality of its higher education and to criticisms over the quality of Cambodian higher education, this study examines the quality of Cambodian higher education from the perspectives of key local and international stakeholders. This study seeks to understand how stakeholders perceive the quality of Cambodian higher education, what strategy the Cambodian government has developed to ensure the quality of its higher education, and how the stakeholders view the effectiveness of the government’s strategy to ensure the quality of higher education.<br><br>In order to answer the above questions, a qualitative phenomenographic research study was undertaken, and data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Using a snowball sample, 61 key stakeholders in Cambodian higher education were interviewed. The stakeholder approach chosen in this study is based on the initial observation driving this study that the adoption of new quality assurance institutions in Cambodia would need to take account of the influence of path dependence on development. In early efforts to develop a quality assurance system, Cambodia failed to invite key stakeholders in higher education to participate in the planning process. International stakeholders were influential in funding and designing a system modelled on those that had worked well in many liberal democratic Western societies. However, the success of new institutions requires a partnership between indigenous people and outsiders which was lacking in this case. The investigation into the combination of local and international stakeholders in this study is consistent with the change in development practice from a focus on the technical assistance provided by international agencies in a dialogue of persuasion to instead promoting a dialogue of partnership in which local stakeholders’ views and expectations inform both the objectives and the design of new institutions.<br>