Aiming for a Degree to Meet the Country’s Needs: an Engineering Student Hopes to Teach  

Sreang Naranut is pursuing a 3-year master’s degree in electrical and information engineering in South Korea.

His goal is to be a telecommunication and electronics university teacher once he obtains a master’s degree in South Korea so he can help address the shortage of engineers in these fields



PHNOM PENH--Less than a month after graduating from the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) with a bachelor’s degree in telecommunication and electronics, Sreang Naranut left for South Korea to pursue a 3-year master’s degree in electrical and information engineering under a Korean Government Scholarship Program.



Having applied for the scholarship in early February 2021, Naranut was selected in July 2021, shortly before completing his bachelor’s degree at RUPP in early August. He left for South Korea on Aug. 25 where he will be attending the Seoul National University of Science and Technology (SeoulTech) after taking one year of Korean language classes.



His goal when he returns is to teach, Naranut said. “Cambodia is short of human resources in electrical engineering due to the lack of teachers in that field.



 “Most students choose accounting, banking, finance, management, law, social sciences and so on...But fewer choose engineering and science,” he said. “Moreover, as our government has been preparing policies to bring Cambodia into the new era of the digital economy and digital government, more qualified teachers and trainers are needed.”



At the present time, Naranut said, there is a shortage of students in telecommunication and electronics engineering in Cambodia, leaving the few engineers in the field unable to respond to the domestic needs as well as efficiently engage Cambodia into the Industrial Revolution 4.0 with high competitiveness.



Originally from Kampong Chhnang Province, Naranut said he chose to pursue engineering in South Korea because he was optimistic about studying in a developed country the advancement of electrical engineering and information technology.



And he firmly believes that, after obtaining a master’s degree in that country, he will be able to contribute to the field in Cambodia. He also intends to pursue a doctorate degree in order to qualify as a university teacher.



“Due to the lack of [Cambodian teachers] in that field, Cambodia needs to hire foreigner professors, which is expensive,” Naranut said. “Therefore, if we have our professors in that field, Cambodia will be rich in human resources. From the perspective of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, more intellectuals and human resources are needed.”



Students should consider careers in electrical engineering and information technology, Naranut said. Urging those who picked those fields to keep on studying hard to become highly qualified, he added,  “[e]ngineering and technology are crucial…there is a demand on the market everywhere.”



Additional reporting by Teng Yalirozy


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