Free-Market Economy and Free-Market University
Cambodia was steered into "free-market economy" after the
radical agreement, done in Paris on October 23, 1991. And this
"humanitarian trend" is, of course, prevalently accepted by
Cambodians. Resulting from this, Cambodia's integration into
regional and international communities has boosted her economy.
Education is now of one of the most or probably the most
pressing agenda of Cambodian people and government. I, myself
and most of the Cambodian people, poor and rich, educated,
low-educated and illiterate, are showing negative point of views
toward Cambodia's mushrooming universities.
I have seen that nearly all of the universities are not playing
as the "human resource developers"; it seems like commercial
competition; "profit-oriented." Can university play the role of
"profit-oriented legal entity?" It would be too dangerous for
the university to turn itself into the profit-oriented entity,
since the whole nation would suffer in the future. In this short
article, I don't want to enlarge my content by depicting and
analyzing those existing or impending drawbacks that those
universities with the profit-oriented vision will bring.
Many apparent problems have been seen and complaints by the
students have been ubiquitously heard; unemployment rates,
non-quality education, no clear-cut academic curriculums. So who
or what are creating these problems. Universities that are
playing profit-oriented role are dramatically contributing to
the aforesaid problems. Apparently, we see that nearly all
sectors; economic, political, social have been analyzed by the
international individuals or institutions. And why is that?
Universities are not producing confident human resources to
replace those of the foreigners.
I see that there are two ways that unemployment is increasing in
Cambodia; 1. Genuinely educated peoples are not provided with
opportunities to express their abilities and 2. Though the
vacancy is available, we don't have the qualified persons to
fill.
I don't have analytical resolution to such the havoc, since I
want to keep this article short and simple. But I just want to
command one point: improving the quality of the universities is
the very first and foremost step of all other betterments and we
will see how it will continuously be proceeding. According to
Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (ICESCR), everyone is entitled to a right to
work and earn a living, not only the ICESCR, Cambodian
constitution and other international instruments that Cambodia
have entered, do guarantee the equally and self-fulfillment of
employment, but quality and opportunity is the problem in
Cambodian, such the aspiration of the this international
instrument is extremely hard to achieve.
"Quality is everything, but that everything is instigated from
the willingness, and government, is of course, that willingness
trigger" (Coined by Lay Vicheka, 2005).