Cambodian lecturers’ pursuit of academic excellence: expectations vs. reality

Abstract

The academic profession in Cambodia has been under growing pressure to pursue excellence in higher education. Nonetheless, various interpretations of what constitutes excellence persist across the public and private sectors, as lecturers follow disparate goals in teaching and research at various jobs and institutions. For many, the diversity of perspectives creates ambiguity and unclear directions for translating academic excellence into quality contribution to social development in the country. This paper illustrates how multiple interpretations and concerns create challenges, inhibiting progress of the Cambodian academic profession and society at large. Qualitative data from national policy papers, personal observations, focus group and expert interviews, were engaged to shed light on the intricacies of competing priorities, and the deficiencies of institutional and systemic support for the scholarly aspirations of the local faculty. The findings in this paper indicate that the lecturers’ limited capacity for intellectually-stimulating scholarship is often coupled with their own hesitation about committing themselves to inquiry-oriented academic work. This study argues that policies on advancing academic excellence can be effective only when the quest for excellence in service is well-matched with enhanced quality of intellectual engagement.

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Asia Pacific Journal of Education
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Cambodian lecturers’ pursuit of academic
excellence: expectations vs. reality
Anatoly Oleksiyenko & Vutha Ros
To cite this article: Anatoly Oleksiyenko & Vutha Ros (2019) Cambodian lecturers’ pursuit of
academic excellence: expectations vs. reality, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 39:2, 222-236,
DOI: 10.1080/02188791.2019.1621797
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2019.1621797
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Cambodian lecturers’pursuit of academic excellence:
expectations vs. reality
Anatoly Oleksiyenko
a
and Vutha Ros
b
a
Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR;
b
Department of English, Institute of
Foreign Languages, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
ABSTRACT
The academic profession in Cambodia has been under growing pressure
to pursue excellence in higher education. Nonetheless, various interpre-
tations of what constitutes excellence persist across the public and
private sectors, as lecturers follow disparate goals in teaching and
research at various jobs and institutions. For many, the diversity of
perspectives creates ambiguity and unclear directions for translating
academic excellence into quality contribution to social development in
the country. This paper illustrates how multiple interpretations and con-
cerns create challenges, inhibiting progress of the Cambodian academic
profession and society at large. Qualitative data from national policy
papers, personal observations, focus group and expert interviews, were
engaged to shed light on the intricacies of competing priorities, and the
deficiencies of institutional and systemic support for the scholarly aspira-
tions of the local faculty. The findings in this paper indicate that the
lecturers’limited capacity for intellectually-stimulating scholarship is
often coupled with their own hesitation about committing themselves
to inquiry-oriented academic work. This study argues that policies on
advancing academic excellence can be effective only when the quest for
excellence in service is well-matched with enhanced quality of intellec-
tual engagement.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 30 June 2018
Accepted 30 April 2019
KEYWORDS
Academic excellence;
academic profession; higher
education; Cambodia
Introduction
Many Asian universities are struggling to reconcile the two competing forces defining excellence in
higher education: aspiration for meaningful service and high-quality intellectual pursuit. The former
requires investing in institutional performance, community engagement, and social development
(Altbach, 2016). The latter necessitates the search for innovative strategies in knowledge develop-
ment, on which good service largely depends (Tierney & Lanford, 2016). While local universities can
benefit from deeper intellectual engagement with centres of excellence abroad, and theoretically
this may further empower local development, in practice these correlations are often neither well
understood, nor properly utilized. In failing to align knowledge and development, local stake-
holders often get stuck in the glonacal entanglements embedded in the competing agendas of
world-class research and local capacity-building (Liu & Metcalfe, 2016; Oleksiyenko, 2019; Ros &
Oleksiyenko, 2018).
CONTACT Anatoly Oleksiyenko paoleks@hku.hk Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
Hong Kong SAR
For Special Issue “Education, Development and Social ‘Progress’in Asia: Critical Insights from Comparative Research”(Eds.: Edward
Vickers & Leang Un)
ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION
2019, VOL. 39, NO. 2, 222–236
https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2019.1621797
© 2019 National Institute of Education, Singapore

In the post-colonial countries of Southeast Asia, local capacities are often insufficient to handle
the global escalation in knowledge development (Hou, 2015). To pursue competitive research,
universities would need to revamp their organizational missions and values, but they often have
limited resources to change the learning environments (Shin, Postiglione, & Huang, 2015).
Moreover, in hierarchical institutions, service often implies subservience to the powerful, rather
than commitment to change in the interest of improving research performance (Qiu, 2014).
The tensions between service responsibilities and research capacity-building have been under-
explored and under-discussed in the literature on academic professions in Asian societies. Neither
has there been sufficient investigation of the challenges faced in that regard by individual
academics. While there are certainly cultural differences in handling these tensions, we wondered
what was happening in the disadvantaged contexts of global higher education. Cambodia was
a logical study target for us, given our unique experiential exposure to this country. We have
designed this study to investigate the challenges in pursuing academic excellence in Cambodia.
Before we elaborate on our research strategy, we would like to outline the key premises driving our
analysis.
Academic excellence: politics and interpretations
Concerns about academic excellence have been at the centre of higher education discussions
worldwide. However, the term itself has remained ambiguous, as most discussants see it as an
abstract aspirational target, rather than a measurable outcome. In many jurisdictions, the discourse
has been politicised and overtaken by the priorities of local elites and powerbrokers. The more
democratic the society, the more divergences tend to emerge in the interpretation of excellence
(Deem, 2009). Politicians usually prioritize one set of values over another in order to streamline the
voices and choices of their constituent groups. In that regard, the precursor of excellence –
meritocracy, which used to be a term of exclusion in the past, has become a more inclusive
concept under pressure from the access and equity movement. With increased participation in
higher education, which gives rise to a growing diversity of stakeholder expectations, many
jurisdictions have been seeking counterbalancing measures to control the quality of higher learn-
ing. Accreditation institutions come into play to control academic standards; however, the accredi-
tors are not any less confused than the academics about notions of excellence in higher education
(Hou, 2012).
Baker and Brown (2007) refer to a set of “largely unwritten rules of the overall game”, which
academic tribes pursue to develop a favourable habitus in which they can secure the highest
possible degree of rewarding teaching and learning experiences. Excellence can thus emerge as
a locally-bound and controllable set of “imageries”, useful in recruiting and nurturing students
(Baker & Brown, 2007). In instances when academic tribes have a strong sense of meritocracy (on
their own territory, at least) (Becher & Trowler, 2001), the local epistemic norms and organizational
cultures can spiral up toward enhanced quality of expertise and intellectual development
(Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Ferrari, 2002).
The rise of mass higher education has, however, compromised many of those rules, in addition
to undermining the idea of the academic profession (Baker & Brown, 2007). The upsurge of
diploma mills (Capogrossi, 2002) has changed the perceptions and interpretations of education
quality in many countries. Hybridized principles proliferate, resulting in the rise of institutions that
often lack “an appropriate academic base”(Stewart & Spille, 1988) and can hardly be called
universities. Many of these education providers rely on “perceptions management”(Stupak,
2001), and manipulate the emotional aspects of academic processes (over-emphasizing “customer
satisfaction”), instead of increasing competencies for critical inquiry and knowledge building. The
demand for “perceptions management”increases when parents encourage their offspring to
pursue credentials instead of knowledge, and subsequently become frustrated with their children’s
failing opportunities for employment following graduation. In systems of mass higher education
ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 223

(Trow, 1994), university professors are pushed to do “more for less”(Waitere, Wright, Tremaine,
Brown, & Pause, 2011), which in reality implies teaching more students and receiving a smaller
salary and less institutional support (Mather & Seifert, 2011).
With an increasing diversity of student demands, the democratization of university access
denotes the “customerization”of students, and the industrialization of universities (Carlson &
Fleisher, 2002). The neoliberal university has driven the discourse of excellence towards the rhetoric
of efficient and competitive workforce and business-like education. Disdain for the “ivory tower”
and advancement of the entrepreneurial university ensued (Tironnen & Nikkola, 2009). The market-
ization of university education called for greater emphasis on customer satisfaction (irrespective of
lecturers’expertise and competence), as mentioned above. Consequently, the concept of academic
excellence was downgraded to a perverted utilitarian paradigm.
The politics of neoliberal competition have also been undermining some drivers of excellence in
research, including peer-review. As Roberts and Shambrook (2012) point out, the integrity of these
drivers is compromised by politicking, prejudices, conflicts of interest, expertise deficiency, factual
errors and dishonesty, which are overlooked or instigated by academic guardians. Fraudulence
pervades larger epistemic communities, beyond gate-keeping boards and committees; Nir &
Zilberstein-Levy (2006, p. 539) argued that, “in most cases, a gap exists between academic ideals
of excellence and the realities of daily university experience”. Revamping the service often neces-
sitates intellectual courage, perseverance, and resistance to the biases of competing epistemic
groups (Campanario, 2003).
A number of scholars have sought to achieve reconciliation between excellence and diversity in
education (see Sternberg, 2008). Excellence is usually advanced through the ideas of exceptional
individuals, who have sufficient expertise to define the highest standards, and shape the discourse for
top-notch performance in their epistemic communities (Ferrari, 2002; Sternberg et al., 2002). While there
are limitations to the capability of even the most remarkable individuals, the boundaries of new standards
are constantly pushed through interaction with competitors, who challenge their ideas. As Ferrari (2002,
p. 225) notes, “[e]xtraordinary individuals do not try to be good at everything; instead they capitalize on
their strengths, and they find ways to remediate their weaknesses (which often may mean finding or
hiring someone to help overcome those weaknesses)”. Intellectual networks and communities evolve
when academics solicit support, and thus encourage the development of cognitive, critical, and creative
strengths through various collaborative projects (Ferrari, 2002). With an increasing number of students
and scholars joining the research communities, learning for excellence becomes more widespread.
Moreover, the competing notions of intelligence and success interlock in systems where the human
agency is prioritized and stretched through opportunity structures that combine diverse modes of
mobility: social, cognitive, organizational, geopolitical, etc. (Oleksiyenko, 2018a).
However, opportunities for disseminating expertise and excellence decrease when governments
foster institutional stratification to ostensibly deter institutional apathy and mediocrity (Tirronen &
Nokkala, 2009). On the one hand, government-endorsed “research excellence”schemes can create
space for meritocracy and excellence (Altbach & Salmi, 2011). This concentrates talent, stimulates
growth of sophisticated learning environments, and promotes “favourable governance features
that encourage leadership, strategic vision, innovation, and flexibility and that enable institutions
to make decisions and manage resources without being encumbered by bureaucracy”(Altbach &
Salmi, 2011, p. 3). On the other hand, such “research excellence”schemes appear to over-fund
already privileged institutions and create silos for competitive positioning in the global hierarchies
of scientific prestige (Deem, 2009). The stories of ostensible success often come from “forceful”
administrations and authoritarian regimes. Revamping the organizational culture for better perfor-
mance implies enforcing compliance with the expectations of an external agency (Mohrman, Ma, &
Baker, 2008). The latter has shown to nurture local resistance (Yang, 2009). International status
anxiety ensues in jurisdictions and institutions that lack the capacities to perform well in presti-
gious peer-review processes controlled by the global hierarchy of knowledge development
(Oleksiyenko, Zha, Chirikov, & Li, 2018).
224 A. OLEKSIYENKO AND V. ROS

Between excellence in scholarship and excellence in service: a conceptual
framework
The epistemic debates on values and priorities of pure versus applied knowledge have been lasting
since ancient times. In the western world, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have laid the ground for
philosophical debates on this topic (Rivera, 2006; Tessitore, 1996). While Socrates thought that
society should be governed by an intellectual aristocracy guided by the constructivist pursuit of
truth, the other two philosophers sought balances in the distribution of specific roles in society.
Plato and Aristotle were arguably more concerned with how service in government should be
organized. Aristotle advocated for reconciliation of intellectual and ethical dimensions: prudence
was essential in balancing a perspective on excellence. In the East, the Confucian heritage scholars,
primarily those that provided the philosophical underpinning for the building of imperial China
and imperial Japan, also advanced the “fitness for purpose”idea. They were even more rigorous in
designing examination instruments for the selection of the most intellectually capable individuals
to serve the imperial governments (Rozman, 2014; Tu, 1996). Meanwhile, in the syncretistic
religious services governing the Khmer Empire, plurality prevailed despite the efforts of the ruling
class to create a unified and elitist perspective on values and beliefs (Briggs, 1951).
In recent times, neoliberal restructuring of universities has reignited the divisive debates about
the ethical and intellectual perspectives of higher education. Deem (2009) reminds us that the
notion of excellence still draws on the traditional concept of searching for high quality standards.
Contenders have to develop expertise before achieving excellence, and then intellectual leadership
(Ferrari, 2002). Competition is unavoidable in most expert-based professions: artists, medical
professionals, and professors constantly seek interaction with comparators and rivals to differenti-
ate their processes and products. These competitive tendencies are apparent in professors’drive to
get the best students, to publish in the best journals, as well as to enhance their personal
reputation in greater communities of learning and practice. However, these processes become
perverted when the demands of neoliberal performativity urge competitors to lose integrity and
employ unethical means to propel themselves to the top of the hierarchy. Neoliberal frameworks of
competition have encouraged unhealthy industrial templates of academic labour, in which excel-
lence in intellectual pursuit is substituted for the excellence in service to the powerful (Oleksiyenko,
2018b).
In trying to find a balance between intellectual pursuit and moral responsibility, academics
become preoccupied with the political stance of their institutions. For many of them, prudence, or
Aristotle’s“golden mean”, translates into a series of political manoeuvres to obtain and retain
tenure in the contested positions of local hierarchies. When it comes to excellence of service,
a university professor (in the East, as much as in the West) is urged to sort out how to serve his/her
closest supervisor, the hiring institution, and important stakeholders in the immediate jurisdiction,
before thinking about how to serve the ideals of knowledge development. Moreover, it can be
easier for some professors to balance service with teaching, rather than with research. By guiding
students towards the highest standards of learning, and empowering them for leadership in social,
economic and political activities, teachers can be viewed as serving the society at large, as well as
making their institutions and departments proud of their contributions. Certainly, by choosing to
serve a degree mill, they may corrupt their record of service and professional development,
depreciating their intellectual and moral capacities in the long run.
Meanwhile, in research, academics increasingly face the challenge of going against the institu-
tional powers if they wish to fulfil their duty to protect academic freedom and express incon-
venient truths (Giroux, 2016). In post-colonial universities, for example, the professors’moral
courage is undermined by limited capacities to do research, as well as by the fear of retaliation
by a repressive bureaucracy, increasingly worried about controversial publicity and revelatory
findings (Altbach, 2001). For institutional hierarchies, excellence in service does not necessarily
equate to academic freedom and integrity as primary drivers in achieving excellence of intellectual
ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 225

output (Brooks & Ly, 2010; Qiu, 2014). In the absence of a free and well-resourced environment for
research and communication, a fine balance of intellectual and ethical perspectives is unachieva-
ble. Within organizational cultures where excellence is determined by “schmoozing with those in
power”(Qiu, 2014, p. 12), meritocratic scholarship often takes a backseat. While the traditions of
local service may normalize subservience, it has no place in modern frameworks of intellectual
excellence, given increasing demand from competitive industries, governments and other stake-
holders for innovative teaching and research strategies. These are needed to position local
students for successful performance nationally and globally.
Contextualizing the excellence dilemmas and challenges in Cambodia
In disadvantaged societies such as Cambodia, academic service to society is subject to diverse
interpretations. Dramatic historical legacies, rapid demographic transformations, and sweeping
market changes urge academics to redefine their identities, roles, and responsibilities. As Un and
Sok (2018) note, Cambodia lived through “protracted wars, a genocide, and foreign occupation and
embargo between 1970 and 1991. Since 1993 it began to rebuild itself after immense destruction,
with injection of huge foreign aid followed by the first postwar general elections, and has now
become a capitalist ‘quasi-democracy,’with significant, yet questionable, economic development
and social progress”(p.1). Reflecting on the weak capacities for academic research and critical
inquiry (Ros & Oleksiyenko, 2018), many scholars rightfully emphasize the failures of the colonial
past, the legacy of Khmer Rouge killings, and the quandaries of post-Khmer Rouge higher educa-
tion restoration and transformations. While pre-colonial education relied on Buddhist monks to
transmit moral imperatives and maintain social order, the French colonists did little to promote
higher learning for rank-and-file Cambodians (Ayres, 2000; Fergusson & Masson, 1997). The French
administration saw value only in educating civil servants who could spread and protect the
imperial interests and rules (Ayres, 2000). After the mass destruction of the colonial infrastructure
and personnel by the Pol Pot regime, the restoration of higher education infrastructure was largely
of interest to the Soviet Union and Vietnam who sought to expand their zones of influence in
Southeast Asia (Ayres, 2000). However, their technical assistance was short-lived due to the
dissolution of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Soviet-trained lecturers had limited capacity for
critical inquiry and international engagement necessitated by the global competition of economic
and educational powers (Oleksiyenko et al., 2018; Pit & Ford, 2004). Subsequently, the Cambodian
lecturers were drawn into the western discourse largely by donors and practice of privatization
1
and marketization (Howes & Ford, 2011; Ros & Oleksiyenko, 2018; Sam & Dahles, 2017).
The knowledge-based economy presently compels many Cambodian universities to recalibrate
their standards of institutional and professional development (Peou, 2017). The irrationalities,
uncertainties and risks are, however, so numerous in the changing environment, that neither the
youth, nor the lecturers, can decide on the best way to strategically allocate their talents (Peou,
2017; Ros & Oleksiyenko, 2018). Furthermore, the notion of service as being a good citizen of an
organization often unravels when the academic profession is in flux. When lecturers moonlight at
a variety of jobs to make ends meet, “service”often implies service to their families and assuring
their welfare, rather than loyalty to random employers. As many disadvantaged lecturers find
themselves obliged to labour long hours at multiple institutions, part-time employment and
hourly-wage payments are legitimized in both the public and private sectors (Brooks & Ly, 2010;
Un, Hem, & Seng, 2017). Un et al. (2017) further note, “the private sector is only able to employ full-
time stafffor administrative tasks, [and] full-time teaching staffare very limited”(p. 45).
Maintaining the integrity of their professional missions and standards in the academe, the
Cambodian lecturers may find themselves in a difficult position if their institutions prioritize
“excellence”of service, as they understand it, over the “excellence”of intellectual endeavours, as
they are understood by their counterparts from global epistemic communities.
226 A. OLEKSIYENKO AND V. ROS

Methodology
To explore the tensions experienced by university lecturers in the context of Cambodia, we
employed a phenomenological approach and used a combination of purposeful and snowball
sampling techniques to create an insightful dataset (Patton, 2002). We engaged eight lecturers
from one public university, and five from three private universities in Phnom Penh. These lecturers
first started their careers in the sought-after field of English language teaching during the massi-
fication of the higher education system, and some of them were later employed in the broader
field of education and/or social sciences.
2
Three participants held PhD degrees and had more than
ten years of academic experience, including facilitating academic programs, NGO-funded research
projects, and numerous publications in international journals. Others, i.e., seven participants hold-
ing Master’s degrees, and three Bachelor’s holders, had a short career span, did not publish, and
carried out mostly menial service responsibilities. All participants’universities were supervised by
the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport (MoEYS), and were in head-to-head competition, as
they offered similar undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs in English training, busi-
ness, social science, humanities, computer science, or engineering.
3
We have codified the partici-
pants’profiles, as outlined in Table 1.
In particular, we have categorized them by their affiliations to public and private universities,
gender, and educational backgrounds. For example, PULFMA01 represents a female lecturer with
a foreign Masters’degree from a Public University, and PR2LMM09 –a male lecturer with a local
Master’s degree from Private University 2. The participant codes allowed us to differentiate
quotation values and generalization capacities in the process of analysis.
4
To maximize the quality of input from participants, we subjected them to different interview
formats. The PhD holders provided individual expert interviews, given that their more varied
academic background, exposure to global academic norms, and experience in policy research
allowed them to discuss many issues at length (Meuser & Nagel, 2009). The participants with
Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees were assembled into focus groups, which made it more comfor-
table for them to generate reflections on their relatively shorter experience in the academe. There
were four focus group interviews –Group 1 and Group 3 consisted of 2 Master’s degree holders
and one Bachelor’s degree holder. Group 2 consisted of one Master’s degree holder and one
Bachelor’s degree holder, while Group 4 consisted of two Master’s degree holders. The number of
focus group participants fluctuated, as not everyone was able to fulfil scheduling commitments.
5
We did not mix PhD holders with other participants to avoid the dominance of “experienced”
voices, and so as not to intimidate the less experienced study participants with the presence of
individuals with senior positions in the local hierarchy of degrees and entitlements. Moreover, we
wanted to see “reproductive”effects among the less experienced participants, given that they
could be more reflective of mainstream trends and interpretations.
Table 1. Participants’profiles and codes.
N Gender
Key employing
university
7
Employment
8
Degree
Country of
Graduation
Types of
Interviews Code
1 Female Public 2005 Master Japan 1st Group PULFMA01
2 Female Public 2010 Master USA 1st Group PULFMA02
3 Female Public 2014 Bachelor Cambodia 1st Group PULFB03
4 Male Private 3 2012 Master Australia 2nd Group PR3LMMA04
5 Female Private 3 2014 Bachelor Cambodia 2nd Group PR3LFB05
6 Male Public 2009 Master USA 3rd Group PULMMA06
7 Male Public 2013 Bachelor Cambodia 3rd Group PULMB07
8 Male Public 2013 Master Cambodia 3rd Group PULMM08
9 Male Private 2 2014 Master Cambodia 4th Group PR2LMM09
10 Male Private 2 2013 Master New Zealand 4th Group PR2LMMA10
11 Male Public 2005 PhD Japan 1st Interview PULMPA11
12 Male Public 2004 PhD Australia 2nd Interview PULMPA12
13 Male Private 1 2006 PhD USA 3rd Interview PR1LMPA13
ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 227

The expert interviews lasted approximately 90 to 120 minutes, while the focus group inter-
views lasted about 90 minutes each. Both expert interviews and focus group interviews were
conducted in a semi-structured fashion and focused on (1) the participants’perceptions of
academic excellence, (2) local and international pressures shaping their definitions, (3) capa-
cities to achieve excellence according to local and international expectations, and (4) tensions
between legacies and innovation in shaping academic excellence. The interviews were con-
ducted in Khmer by the second author in the period from December, 2015 to January, 2016.
The recordings were transcribed and translated into English by the second author. The first
author reviewed transcripts, requesting elaboration on ambiguous points and clarifications in
parts of the translation.
We have coded transcript data to identify key themes and sub-themes. Some of those
themes were determined by our theoretical framework. Others emerged from interview ana-
lyses. We went through several cycles to understand how the themes and related interview
quotes could be logically presented in the findings analysis. The thematic coding in the
interviews was also correlated with the themes identified in the national policy papers and
institutional policy documents (e.g., vision and mission statements and strategic plans available
in the public domain). In particular, we sought to understand how the public and private
statements correlated with capacity development in “research”,orcommitmentto“teaching”
and “community services”, or aspirations for enhanced “knowledge transfer”and “internationa-
lization”. This allowed for a better grasp of various stakeholders’conceptual approaches to
excellence in the Cambodian academic profession.
We also triangulated data from the interviews and document reviews with our observations in
Cambodia (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The second author drew on his personal observations as
a local lecturer engaged in teaching, research and management in Phnom Penh between
2010–2018. The first author reflected on feedback from Cambodian senior university managers
participating in the annual summer institutes hosted by his university between 2014–2018.
Moreover, we discussed insights from our joint visits to several private universities in Siem Reap
in 2018. We cross-checked our observations to reduce bias of subjective perspectives (Flick, 2004).
Findings
Relying on teaching as a major source of income-generation and status-enhancement, very few
Cambodian university lecturers saw their academic roles and opportunities for intellectual development
linked to research. Moreover, most of these lecturers were reluctant to take on research in the absence of
an institutional support system or societal appreciation of their intellectual outputs. The following
sections elaborate on how their perceptions of excellence were shaped by that particular set of
expectations.
Perceptions of academic excellence
The Cambodian government has been advocating for academic excellence over the past decade.
The country’sPolicy on Higher Education 2030 calls for building “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”(MoEYS, 2014, p. 3). This
policy direction is reflected in the vision and mission statements of both public and private
universities: their websites, information booklets, and strategic plans all advocate for “excellence”
in teaching, research and service. Moreover, the pursuit of internationalization, or benchmarking
against global standards, is also propagated by the universities. However, our interviews showed
that Cambodian lecturers seemed to pay little attention to the institutional statements and
directives, and instead argued that academic excellence in Cambodia is ambiguous and lacks
common definitions. One senior lecturer commented, “Academic excellence is a vague term that
228 A. OLEKSIYENKO AND V. ROS

has not been clearly defined. If we look at the visions, the core values of every university, we think
they use many value-loaded terms such as quality, capability, efficiency and a lot more”
(PULMPA11).
During the interviews, experienced lecturers showed awareness of academic excellence con-
cepts, but primarily in reference to their studies in the western system. In contrast, early career
lecturers appeared to possess little understanding of what academic excellence entails and were
unable to make incisive comments. They did offer that, by observing experienced lecturers as their
role models, they were being guided toward academic excellence, as the following comments
attest:
I think, as I am new in my career, I have to learn from other senior academic staffto gain more insight and to
get familiar with any process in the academic work first, because I might not know what is expected at the
beginning of my career. Once I understand and get used to the work, I can start moving toward academic
excellence. (PULFB03)
Generally, I am new to this and I am just a recent graduate. I do not have the capacity yet; hence, I have to join
workshops or seminars in order to improve myself. (PR3LFB05)
Most of the study participants argued that students’performance was a key component of
academic excellence. Students’attainment of high GPA scores attested to their skill level, knowl-
edge, and attitudes to learning. Moreover, students’ability to turn the acquired skills into gainful
employment was viewed as a reflection of academic excellence. As one senior lecturer stated:
Excellence refers to the learning output, like a Bachelor’s degree or such, and what you have learned. It is
related to everything the university has prepared, and the requirement and learning outcomes of every
program. Well, that is the first point. The second point is job skills. Are the students able to work after they
graduate? This means whether or not they have the skills to work for that profession. And if we make it simple,
it is all about the employability. (PULMPA11)
Experienced lecturers emphasized that a relevant curriculum was part of academic excellence, as it
was crucial for equipping students with the necessary competencies for employment and survival
in society. One lecturer remarked:
[Academic excellence] is related to the curriculum. Is it old or new? Does it respond well to the market
demand? Because the objective of our study is to work, and to use [our learning outcomes] in the social
context. So, if we have anything that the society wants, it can help the students. It’s the encouragement that,
when they finish their study, they will have jobs. (PRL2MMA10)
Lecturers’qualifications and the years of service in teaching were also linked to achieving academic
excellence. As one experienced lecturer maintained:
I think “academic excellence”refers to our faculty members’qualifications –whether their degrees are high or
low and how much teaching experience they have; because if they have a Master’s or a PhD degree, then they
must have known and learned a lot. Thus, when they come to teach the students, the students can have
broader knowledge. Their experience is also a factor, because if they have taught for many years, their
teaching approaches will be good. They know how to vary teaching techniques to benefit their students
the most. If we compare them to the new academics that do not have much experience, students can’t
understand much. (PULMMA06)
Other lecturers also highlighted the ability of teachers to initiate extracurricular activities for
students: e.g., clubs, workshops and community work. This type of service was viewed as enabling
students to acquire soft skills and community linkages. One participant advocated for the learning
maximization opportunities as follows:
Another thing that the university needs in order to be considered as pursuing academic excellence [is] to
involve [students] in a lot more community work, for instance, having projects to help certain provinces,
helping children or orphanages. They might even help the university with extracurricular activities, or organize
workshops for the students, or even share their experiences with their co-workers. (PR3LMMA04)
ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 229

Only the lecturers with postgraduate degrees from the western-system research universities
brought forward the idea of research as a contributing factor to enhancing academic excellence.
Most of those that endorsed and wished to conduct research were driven by their individual
passions and interests. However, they felt frustrated, as their efforts were largely unsupported, as
the following comments suggest:
Teaching and learning has to be linked with updated knowledge . . . and how to get updated knowledge? It’s
research. Research and innovation are what we need. So, I think one component of academic excellence,
which is very important, one critical component is the continual improvement in scholarship and in knowledge
[development] . . . we don’t have that, because lecturers here don’t publish. Only a few do research, but only
consultancy work, so where is the contribution to scholarship? No. So what kind of knowledge are students
getting now? Outdated knowledge. Maybe outdated. Maybe personalized knowledge . . . If we look at
academic excellence in terms of continual improvement in scholarship, it’s next to nothing here, almost
nothing. (PULMPA12)
In my opinion, people don’t do research to improve their teaching and learning, because they don’t think they
need to do it . . . but some people choose to do it because they think that research is the way to improve
themselves as academics. (PR1LMPA13)
Also, most participants felt that universities were paying lip service to the government’s goal to
“build research culture in all higher education institutions”(MoEYS, 2010, p. 2). An experienced
lecturer made a comment that resonated through many interviews:
You look at any regulations or rules or visions of any universities. Do they have any system in place where they
encourage lecturers or support lecturers to do research? Maybe they have pockets of things here and there,
but nothing that could be considered as a supporting system. Look at how much money they allocate, and
[how much] money universities apportion for lecturers to do research. No. At the moment, there are few
universities that are trying to do something. You don’t remunerate people based on the number of published
papers they have, based on the number of research projects they’ve been involved in, or anything. And
students, do they care if their teachers have done research? (PULMPA12)
Unresolved “glonacal”divides
Human resource development was argued to be the pivotal element shaping perspectives of
academic excellence in the higher education discourse of Cambodia. The interviewees argued
that universities were influenced by the massification and privatization of higher education.
Meanwhile, despite national qualification frameworks urging local university faculty to gain an
“understanding [of] the skills and capabilities of graduates”(Royal Government of Cambodia, 2012,
p. 1), university curricula were said to be borrowing primarily from overseas, without careful
consideration of local contexts. The term “international”was usually attached to program and
course titles to influence students’and parents’perceptions of the curricula as being of high
quality, because they are based on English-language programs and foreign textbooks. A senior
lecturer educated abroad voiced his frustration by saying:
[The curriculum is] imported or adapted from somewhere else, usually abroad . . . A university is good as long
as the curriculum consists of a lot of English programs. Then they believe that the curriculum is good . . . We,
Cambodians, don’t have the ability to create our own curriculum. I’m not sure if you agree, but look at our
school, you know, they’ve got the curriculum from 20 years ago, so you’ve got something from somewhere,
and you claim it’s new; it’s international. People believe it, and it looks good. (PULMPA12)
Cambodian universities further manage perceptions by multiplying memoranda of understanding
with overseas universities. Both public and private universities have long lists of international
partners on their websites. Moreover, some interviewees argued that Cambodian universities
tried to increase admissions pools, and enhance institutional attractiveness by encouraging student
exchange, in addition to hiring teachers with foreign degrees. The following was shared during the
interviews:
230 A. OLEKSIYENKO AND V. ROS

Recently, there has been a trend of private universities trying to use the achievements of students, like
scholarships or exchange programs, as testimonials to publicly promote the quality of their universities.
(PULMPA11)
Universities actually want the international recognition. Therefore, they start to encourage their students to go
through some competition, and involve their students in some international activities. (PR3LFB05)
The faculty members who obtained Master’s Degrees from abroad, or something like that, or took part in any
exchange program for 1 or 2 years and became famous [locally] –I think that is, a way to attract more students
to come to study, as they believe that academic excellence is, uh: the staffare awesome, because they have
been abroad. (PULMMA06)
Meanwhile, many parents and students have vague idea of how to utilize the emerging opportu-
nities. Several participants argued that these important stakeholders have a limited understanding
of their roles:
I think it is unlikely for parents to have high expectations. They only have the responsibility to send their
children to school. I do not think they actually have a clear vision in which they see their children having
certain specific skills, like 21st century skills. It seems like they just go with the flow. They think that this skill is
popular, so if their children learn this skill, they can find a good job . . . We can say, based on parents’
perspective, academic excellence is still narrowly defined. (PULMPA11)
University students in Cambodia, from my experience, are not well-prepared, which means that they went
through poor quality education for twelve years, so they are not really ready for university level in terms of the
standard I think they should have. It is not just the knowledge and skills, but also the attitude. A lot of my
colleagues mention that too . . . Sometimes we are not sure why they are here. They are not sure why they are
here either. You know? Why do they come to the university? For what? They don’t know. They don’t really
have clear goals for their career and for their life. (PR1LMPA13)
One experienced lecturer noted in frustration that some universities did not do much to reduce the
disparities in students’entry and exit capacities. As a result, these universities were increasingly
losing reputation among local employers:
What’s more important is that it depends on the employers. Even though they put pressure indirectly on
universities, because they do not tell universities what they want from the graduates, they complain that the
students they recruit from a particular university are not able to work well because they lack certain skills, so . . .
They simply blacklist any universities they think are low in quality. They don’t normally have much connection
with universities. The feedback can be obtained through personal networking. We know them, so they can tell
us what skills our students lack, or about their difficulty in training their staff. (PULMPA11)
In search of reconciliation between knowledge-making and service
The growing diversity of higher education in Cambodia has raised doubts about institutional
ability to shape a common denominator for excellence. According to the interviewees, growing
demand by students has exerted pressure on Cambodian lecturers to obtain higher degrees.
From 2010 to 2016, the number of faculty members holding Master’s degrees increased from
6,197 to 9,320, while PhD holders went from 805 to 1,016 (MoEYS, 2013,2017). The university
websites and brochures we reviewed all emphasized the presence of staffwith postgraduate
degrees (but not the number of students, for example). The accumulation of credentials
seemingly proved the worth of both the teachers and universities, enabling them to compete
for more and better students. Altogether, such positioning generated status anxiety among
lecturers:
[Students] actually want their teachers to have at least an MA or a PhD. When you are asked, and you answer, ‘I
got a BA’, they would actually ask more questions like, ‘What about your MA’? (PR3LFB05)
If [students] enrol in a good university, they expect the teachers to be great as well. And one more thing: they
always ask for more new things, and methods with clear instruction. Some just want something easy, with
ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 231

simple explanation and instruction –simply to pass, whereas others are interested in group work and self-
study. Actually, this is partly why the academic pressure pushes the faculty members to go for an MA.
(PR3LMMA04)
You know, you need to get qualifications, and other universities boast about their lecturers having PhDs and
Master’s, so we need to get our faculty members to get Master’s and PhDs or recruit more Master’s and PhD
holders . . . If you talk about formal qualifications as an indication of improved academic excellence, then yes,
there are pressures there. And the pressure is so huge that people just pay for the degrees locally, as well.
(PULMPA12)
To encourage competition among teachers, universities have begun to introduce teaching evalua-
tion schemes that allow for the use of student opinions to steer the lecturers’attitudes. The
following sentiments were shared during the interview:
It will be the peer pressure: when you are being evaluated by your students and the result is not that good, it
might be raised during a [faculty] meeting. It is quite shameful to admit, and more importantly, we also feel
that we lose face among our colleagues and managers, even if the university does not reveal the identity [of
the lecturer with the low scores]. (PRL3MMA04)
Here, they have more or fewer classes entirely depending on the evaluation. Therefore, this can be a really
strong pressure point. (PR3LFB05)
Meanwhile, the interviewees complained of being overloaded with teaching large classes and
moonlighting.
6
This left them with little time to monitor students’progress and offer higher quality
lessons to meet their needs. As one lecturer at a private university admitted, “I have to teach at
three places, and the three places have three different administrative set-ups. So I have to go here
and there, and the tests are also different. So I have less time to focus on teaching”(PR2LMM09). “If
I teach less than before, and spend more time on research, my income will be affected, because the
funding for research is not much either. That isn’t enough,”explained a teacher at a private college
(PR3LMMA04). Those working in public institutions are also clearly overtaxed: “We have to teach for
many hours to earn a decent income. As a result, we cannot have enough time to dedicate
ourselves to other things”(PULFMA02).
The teaching overload limited lecturers’research productivity and kept them on the peripheries
of international communities and collaborations. The following sentiments were shared across the
interviews:
. . . Cambodian academics don’t publish that much, so it’s hard for researchers outside Cambodia to get the
right partners and to create opportunities for collaboration. If academics here published a bit more, it would
be easier for people outside to know what the capacity is locally, who they could collaborate with and so on.
(PULMPA12)
I think whether or not we compare ourselves with those academic staff, there won’t be much pressure from
the regional or global academic community on us. Even if they join conferences or become members of
a certain organization . . . The point is we do not really focus on research productivity and we don’t practice
professorship effectively and widely. We do not belong as a member of any communities. (PULMPA11)
Discussion and concluding remarks
In the context of a post-colonial higher education system in a post-conflict country, the develop-
mental agenda places an emphasis on service to local communities. Teachers’moral responsibility
is described by Cambodian lecturers as a contribution to their students’development. At the same
time, students may not be sophisticated enough to see what, and how universities contribute in
that regard. Excellence for most Cambodian students often implies memorizing and replicating
their teachers’knowledge (Howes & Ford, 2011). Public opinion is also largely based on final
outcomes only, most critically –graduate employment (or lack thereof). Meanwhile, public and
private universities have yet to communicate the value of their instruction for local competence-
232 A. OLEKSIYENKO AND V. ROS

building in the knowledge economy. Ironically, some academics are still barely aware of the value
of their teaching. Their academic work hardly corresponds to global academic production of new
knowledge (Ros, Eam, Heng, & Ravy, in press). Their personal commitments to uncompetitive
teaching institutions and to the academic profession are highly unstable. Proxies, such as interna-
tional degrees or affiliations, are used to mitigate anxieties of both the external and internal
stakeholders.
Nonetheless, as pools of students in Cambodia increase in size and become more diverse,
there is growing competition among universities to get “better”students. As the competitive
universities seek to enhance their reputation by creating a more attractive learning environ-
ment, lecturers are also pressured to improve the quality of their credentials and pursue higher
degrees at home and abroad. While these pressures urge lecturers to further their education,
returnees with western degrees often struggle in Cambodian universities, where rewards are not
necessarily based on research-based merits and where seniority and hierarchical compliance
matter more (Brooks & Ly, 2010;Howes&Ford,2011). Their western academic values (e.g.,
inquiry-led learning, interdisciplinarity, ground-up governance) clash with post-socialist or post-
colonial norms of a silo-oriented and prescriptive teaching university –a legacy of multiple
donor dependencies (Oleksiyenko et al., 2018;Pit&Ford,2004). Simultaneously, there is
a strong push out of the profession for the young faculty members, who do not see compelling
role models or incentives to continue struggling in a low-status and exhausting job. In the
absence of intellectual leadership in their institutions, or global connections, many lose faith in
the academic profession.
While the ministerial authorities periodically push universities to be more engaged and compe-
titive globally, faculty members can achieve little if innovation is underappreciated by the public
and the universities. Moreover, it is difficult to maintain passionate service to local institutions of
higher learning when the pursuit of excellence is ignored, or viewed as undesirable by society. As
participants in this study indicate, the Cambodian discourse of higher education remains strained
by the government’s rhetoric aimed at raising aspirations for higher intellectual standards, without
considering the institutional realities of an underfunded and underdeveloped research infrastruc-
ture left behind by French, Khmer Rouge, and Soviet legacies. Such rhetoric, devoid of local buy-in,
results in the impulsive and uncritical adoption of western values in policymaking promoted by
international donors (Rappleye & Un, 2018; Sen, 2019).
Due to our limited sample, we are cautious about the generalisability of the findings. A broader
spectrum of regional, institutional, disciplinary and cross-generational insights would further
broaden the perspective on academic excellence in the context of disadvantaged higher education.
However, our study points to a lingering challenge in the Cambodian academic profession: the
dichotomy between rhetoric and reality is holding the country’s lecturers hostage to conflicting
interpretations of academic roles and responsibilities. Regrettably, it compromises their pursuit of
excellence in intellectual endeavours, while hampering the development of the academic
profession.
Notes
1. The university system has been expanding dramatically since 1997, witnessing an increase from eight public
higher education institutions and around 1,000 students in 1995, to 48 public and 73 private institutions and
217,840 students in 2016 (Chealy, 2009; Clayton & Ngoy, 1997; MoEYS, 2017). The majority of students enrol in
private programs offered by both public and private universities (World Bank, 2012).
2. With the rising importance of English, many students are taking a degree in English concurrently with their
other degree (Howes & Ford, 2011; Peou, 2017).
3. Given limited state funding, most public and private universities are in intensive competition in certain fields,
such as English training, business, and computer science, as they mainly rely on student fees as the source of
their income (Pit & Ford, 2004; Un & Sok, 2018).
ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 233

4. These codes are not without reproach. For example, in the absence of a classification framework for academic
employment status in Cambodia (see Un et al., 2017), we found it difficult to track down publicly-accessible
information on the number of lecturers’full-time and part-time jobs and institutional affiliations.
5. Female academics tended to renege on appointments more often because of competing obligations.
6. See also Ros and Oleksiyenko (2018).
7. All employing universities are located in Phnom Pehn. All private universities in the sample were established
after 2000. In 2018, the public university enrolled approx. 12,000 students and charged undergraduate tuition
fees in the amount of approx. USD$2,000. Meanwhile, the private universities’enrolment ranged from 4,000 to
24,000 students, paying tuition fees in the range of USD$1,600 to USD$2,500.
8. The starting year of employment at the university listed on the left.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [General Research Fund (GRF)
#17665816];University of Hong Kong [HKU Seed Fund for Basic Research #201509159026].
Notes on contributors
Anatoly Oleksiyenko is a scholar of international higher education. He holds PhD in Theory and Policy Studies of
Higher Education from the University of Toronto. He is currently Associate Professor of Higher Education at the HKU
Faculty of Education. His research focuses on governance challenges in global higher education as well as on
international student mobility. He has published on these topics in such journals as Higher Education, Higher
Education Policy, Minerva, Studies in Higher Education, and Tertiary Education and Management. He is also the
author of the book “Global Mobility and Higher Learning”(Routledge, 2018) and the lead editor of the book
“International Status Anxiety and Higher Education: The Soviet Legacy in China and Russia”(CERC-Springer, 2018).
Vutha Ros has been a researcher in higher education since assuming a faculty position at Department of English,
Institute of Foreign Languages, Royal University of Phnom Penh in 2010. He is currently pursuing a PhD Degree in
Higher Education at the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. His research is centred on academic
profession, research capacity building, and leadership and management in higher education, and blended learning in
higher education.
ORCID
Vutha Ros http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6198-3704
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