Higher
Education in CambodiaI study business. My country has just started to have a free economic market since 1993. This means that Thailand can export their products to my country and my country can do the same with Thailand. It means that businessmen can have their own businesses and make their own decisions and their own money. Since this happened so recently, the teachers are just learning about what a free economy is. This means that my studies are very difficult. We have no books written in our language, only in English. Some come from the United Sates and some from Canada. It is hard for us to use what we have learned in a job, because the books are written for different cultures than ours. For example, I read a book that said Coca Cola company in the United States tried to do this and this and this. How do I know about my own country; how do I find out what Coca Cola is doing in my own country? No one has done the research on this. I can't get a job working for Coca Cola in Cambodia because what I know is the Coca Cola company in the United States.
Another thing is the government. They don't know which way they will go. They go both ways: French systems and English systems of law. Students get confused. For me, I had to learn both civil law and common law and this was a waste of time. In the university, they study civil law. But when we try to work together with business men who are grounded in the investment system, we students don't get hired. Our university teaches the wrong thing. The university studies French law because they want to get charity; money from the French government because our government has no money to support this university.
