This study aims to investigate the characteristics of students who switch versus those who do not switch when they transition from upper secondary to higher education. The data from 1338 students randomly selected from 21 HEIs in Cambodia in 2020 found that upper secondary school students are more likely than not to switch academic majors when they enter higher education. The tendency to switch is more common for female students in science-track, most of whom chose non-STEM majors such as […]

The Royal Government of Cambodia acknowledges the vital role of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in developing a high-quality workforce to better respond to labor market demand and contribute to the national development agenda. In the past decade, with support from and collaboration with development partners, the Government has put effort into expanding access to and improving the quality of TVET. To improve quality, the Ministry of Labour Vocational and Training (MLVT) has developed competency-based training and assessment […]

While digital transformation around the globe has significantly gained momentum and speed, embracing technologies in our daily life is now beyond question. In this regard, we need to ask whether or not individuals are ready to accept and use technologies when provided and what really affects one’s technology readiness. The main objective of this study is to understand the role of parents and family background in influencing an undergraduate student’s technological readiness. We employ the Ordinary Least Square Regression method […]

Understanding what determines a worker’s passion for skills training has important policy implications, particularly in the current context of the fourth industrial revolution, in which knowledge is deemed obsolete within several years. The purpose of this study is to answer a specific question: are higher-ability garment workers more likely to engage in industrial skills training? To do so, we use a dataset with a final sample of 787 garment workers in Cambodia. We apply logit and cluster-standard-error Ordinary Least Square […]

To accelerate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal on clean water and sanitation, the focus of WASH programming in developing countries has shifted from a traditional infrastructure approach to a more systems-based approach. Greater emphasis on a systems approach has also drawn attention to the significant role played by local leadership in developing sustainable WASH systems. Building on the evidence of the effectiveness of leaders trained through the Civic Champions Program, an innovative leadership development program in Cambodia, this […]

This study intends to identify existing permeability pathways between post-secondary education and training in Cambodia and to highlight hindrances that hamper the smooth permeability between the two systems. Adopting a hybrid process, the study combines both inductive and deductive thematic analysis approaches in coding transcribed interviews at 15 sampled training institutions and universities. The study finds that the most common route to higher education and training is through the higher qualification programmes under the same track. Although a transfer mechanism […]

Drawing on 203 quantitative surveys with women workers in Cambodia and a further set of semi-structured interviews with 60 original participants, this paper is one of the very first to present empirically grounded research from garment workers on the financial challenges of navigating the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show how in the making of clothes to be worn by Western consumers, poorly paid garment workers are reducing their eating to repay long-term debts and those newly taken […]

The escalating climate change-related disasters around the world are a serious threat to human existence and human livelihoods. Rural people living in developing countries, especially those of the poorest, are believed to be particularly vulnerable to climate change. As the number of climate change programs designed to help the poorer households has grown, concern has also arisen over their ability to participate and the extent to which they benefit from those programs. There is limited documented evidence on whether climate […]

Many rural communities in the Lower Mekong region are vulnerable to the climate uncertainty induced by climate change due to high rate of poverty, lack of agricultural technology, and heavy reliance on the environment for their livelihoods. Rural people are likely to migrate to urban areas in response to the climate impacts and thanks to the rises in the number of cities, urban areas, and industrial zones in this region over the last decades. We selected a rural area in […]

Growing rural-to-urban and international migration flows have sparked concerns about the investments in the education of the children left behind in Cambodia. We draw on a panel household-level survey conducted in rural villages in 2014 and 2017 to analyse the relationship between parental migration and children’s schooling. The analysis shows that children of migrant parents complete less years of schooling than children of non-migrant parents. We find a bigger effect for children whose parents migrated abroad, for children aged 12 […]

In recent years, the Cambodian government has introduced a reform agenda to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, improve the bureaucratic administration of education, and address other major challenges affecting public schools. The new agenda has led to several remarkable transformations in Cambodia’s educational system, including the introduction of a new innovative school model called New Generation School. However, the sustainability and scalability of this new model are questionable due to the large investment needed to operate these schools, […]

Using the 2011 Cambodia Rural-Urban Migration Project, we re-examine the effect of parental migration on the long-term educational progress of children who have accompanied their parents to urban areas by comparing such children with those left behind in rural areas. We use a measurement that captures schooling disruption effect and allows for the possibility that being a migrant child also depends on school quality in the neighbourhood. The fixed-effect estimator is applied to eliminate family characteristics shared among siblings such as parental resources and perceptions towards education. […]