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University

Cambodia

English-medium private universities for a few thousand dollars, and no reputation attached.

5/5
ingredients confirmed
Every ingredient this page asks for has a figure and a source.
Tuition
~$2.5–6k/yr
Living
~$650/mo
Single student, all in. Compared at country level, so capital cities and large metros run higher. The price level behind it prices the basket residents buy, and a foreign renter cannot reach the cheap end of local housing — poorer countries may still sit too low here.
Education
Useful here, invisible elsewhere
Research impact 1st percentile globally — median of 1 ranked universities (CWTS Leiden Open Edition 2025). Research output, not teaching quality; it informs the band, it does not set the score.
Work after study
You may stay; working is the part that needs permission
Safety
Mid
Ninety-sixth of 163, and one of the largest deteriorations in this edition after the 2025 border fighting with Thailand

More is being checked.

Where these figures came from

One row per ingredient. Open any of them for the source, how far we trust it, and when we last checked.

Tuition~$2.5–6k/yr

The American University of Phnom Penh publishes $3,000 a semester for its single-degree programmes and $4,500 for dual degrees, at five courses a semester; Paragon International University publishes a range of $2,500 to $4,500 a year by faculty, plus a $500 annual registration fee. The public Royal University of Phnom Penh charges less again. Re-read attempted and not finished: no Cambodian university publishes an international fee schedule that could be reached; the figures in circulation are aggregator estimates of "from USD 1,000 a year".

Confidence
printed in the source
Living~$650/mo

Pathoff judgement directed by evidence, not computed from it: the country’s position comes from the World Bank household consumption price level for 2024 (0.363 of the United States, CC BY 4.0 — the ICP benchmark carried forward annually by the World Bank’s own method); the US reference budget is ours. See the Pathoff method, section 12.

Single student, all in. Compared at country level, so capital cities and large metros run higher. The price level behind it prices the basket residents buy, and a foreign renter cannot reach the cheap end of local housing — poorer countries may still sit too low here.

Confidence
made by us from the source
EducationUseful here, invisible elsewhere

Pathoff education rubric (the Pathoff method, section 9-1), degree band "Locally solid, externally unknown": The English-medium private universities work well in the Cambodian and regional labour market. Mid-band: outside the country the institutions are unknown and the qualification is assessed from nothing.

Research impact 1st percentile globally — median of 1 ranked universities (CWTS Leiden Open Edition 2025). Research output, not teaching quality; it informs the band, it does not set the score.

Confidence
made by us from the source
Work after studyYou may stay; working is the part that needs permission

Pathoff outcome rubric (the Pathoff method, section 10-2), degree outcome band "A route that needs an employer": Graduation confers nothing, and legal work requires both a business visa and a separate labour-ministry work permit obtained by an employer, inside a foreign-worker quota. High in the band for an unusual reason: unlike almost everywhere else in this band, losing the job does not end the right to stay, because the visa extension is not tied to the employer.

Confidence
made by us from the source
Rule
No change known to us
Last checked
2026-09
SafetyMid

Global Peace Index 2026: rank 96 of 163, score 2.075. Converted by the Pathoff GPI formula (GPI in lib/scoring.ts)

Ninety-sixth of 163, and one of the largest deteriorations in this edition after the 2025 border fighting with Thailand

Confidence
made by us from the source

What it is like here

Phnom Penh has a cluster of English-medium private universities that publish their fees openly and cost a few thousand dollars a year, in a city where a student can live on six hundred a month. The honest counterweight is that the degree carries no weight outside Cambodia, and that working here afterwards means an employer, a work permit and a foreign-worker quota.

How the process works

1

Apply directly to the university

The private universities teach in English and publish their fees.

⏱ 2–4 months
2

Enter on an ordinary visa and extend

Cambodia does not run a separate student-permit track the way its neighbours do.

⏱ 2–4 weeks
3

For work, add the labour-ministry permit

The visa lets you live here; only the work permit lets you be employed.

⏱ 1–2 months

Where students go

Phnom Penh
Every English-medium university and all the graduate employers

Open any ingredient above to see where its figure came from, how far we trust it and when we last checked. Nothing here is a substitute for the official source. Last reviewed 2026-09-04.

Photograph of Cambodia by Jakub Hałun, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.