Amid post-war boom, unemployment stalks Cambodia's brightest
- From: Chim <ChimS1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:06:13 -0700
Amid post-war boom, unemployment stalks Cambodia's brightest
by Benjamin Helfrich
Wed Oct 24, 10:16 AM ET
PHNOM PENH (AFP) - With more than two years to go before he graduates,
university student Kiang Saran is already so crippled by unemployment
fears that his grades are slipping.
The pressure to land a job and support his family in Cambodia's rural
Prey Veng province is a "constant worry," the 22-year-old economics
major says, as he sits waiting for classes to begin at Phnom Penh's
Royal University of Law and Economics.
"There is never a time I don't think about this," he tells AFP.
Kiang Saran is just like tens of thousands of young Cambodian men and
women -- smart, ambitious and eager to ride the country's post-war
boom that has generated double-digit economic growth and re-emerging
middle class affluence.
But as the country turns the corner from political strife, it is being
confronted with one of its biggest challenges to development: huge
numbers of newly-minted university graduates with high expectations,
but few worthy jobs and dimming hopes for the future.
"This is a big, big problem in our society," says Neau Vira, programme
director for the Faculty of Education at Pannasastra University of
Cambodia.
Between 1996 and 2006, Cambodia's young labour force -- more than half
of the country's population is now under the age of 25 -- grew by a
staggering 78 percent.
This is compared with an average of six percent in other ASEAN
countries, according to the International Labour Organisation, and
also coincided with an explosion in university enrollment as Cambodia
enjoyed increasing stability and prosperity.
Seven years ago, only 25,000 Cambodians were participating in some
form of higher education.
By 2007, that number had increased to around 91,000, according to
figures from the think-tank Economic Institute of Cambodia (EIC). At
the same time, though, only one in 10 university graduates have found
work, creating a daunting challenge for the country, which overall
remains mired in poverty despite the economic successes.
On a recent visit to Cambodia, World Bank president Robert Zoellick
addressed the issue of the country's labour market, saying some
300,000 jobs needed to be created each year to keep up with the demand
for work.
Cambodian Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh echoed Zoellick's thoughts on
the urgent need for jobs, pointing out that it has taken Cambodia's
garment sector, the country's main industrial employer, nine years to
create a total of 330,000 positions.
Those are almost all low-skilled, low-wage jobs, highlighting one of
most serious obstacles to white-collar employment in Cambodia; a
glaring miss-match between university education and the demands of
Cambodia's job market.
The largely agricultural country remains propped up by the most narrow
of industrial sectors -- garments and tourism, neither of which
require the skill sets taught at most universities.
"We did a study with garment factory manufacturers to see if the
curriculum taught in Cambodian universities fit what the industry
needed," says EIC director Sok Hach.
"Almost none did," he says, adding that efforts to create hospitality
programmes to feed Cambodia's growing tourism industry have also
floundered.
Young Cambodians are churned out by the thousands with various
specialities, from law and management to communications and languages.
But with little official oversight, the quality of Cambodian
universities swings broadly from good to bad, and observers warn that
many are simply degree factories intent only on collecting tuition
fees.
"Some of these schools give out diplomas that are useless, which
parents have paid a lot of money for," one Western diplomat says.
At the same time, many students are short-sighted, rushing to secure
any degree, no matter how irrelevant it might be to the existing job
market, says Pannasastra University's Neau Vira.
"They don't think much about the job after graduation," he says,
adding that many university graduates are woefully naive about the
realities of employment.
"Their expectation is to get a good job, but they don't even know what
a good job really means to them or what a good job is," Neau Vira
says.
The result is thousands of recent graduates -- however under-qualified
they might be -- competing for a few select posts in the private or
government sectors.
"So many students graduate with degrees in law and economics," says
Nop Ratanak, 22, a fourth year law student at the Royal University of
Law and Economics and president of its student association.
"Like for me, the job market is so narrow, I may have to find another
option," he says, adding that he hoped more foreign investment in the
future would spur job growth.
But government figures show that foreign investment, while on the
rise, is still likely to create mostly low-wage, labour-intensive work
in factories or on construction sites.
The most likely alternative for many like economics student Kiang
Saran is to do nothing.
"I've heard a lot of university students say they've graduated and
don't have jobs," he says, before settling in to the first lecture of
the day.
"Many of those who earned a degree, including my friends, can't find
work and simply stay home.
"I have never had hope that this school will find a job for me," he
says. "There are many candidates applying for one job."
.
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