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Special & vocational

Cambodia

A culinary academy that prints an international rate — and it is under five thousand.

5/5
ingredients confirmed
Every ingredient this page asks for has a figure and a source.
Tuition
~$4.8k/yr
Living
~$650/mo
Single student, all in — deliberately the same figure as the degree page. It is the same person living the same way; only the training differs. 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.
Field reputation
Regionally credible in hospitality
Industry access
The quota bites hardest in exactly these jobs
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~$4.8k/yr

The Academy of Culinary Arts Cambodia publishes the total cost of its two-year diploma on its own site: $8,080 for Cambodian students and $9,600 for international students, which is $4,800 a year. The academy states that donor funding holds the price below what the programme costs to run. No conversion: the school prices in dollars.

Confidence
printed in the source
Last checked
2026-09
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 — deliberately the same figure as the degree page. It is the same person living the same way; only the training differs. 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
Field reputationRegionally credible in hospitality

Pathoff education rubric (the Pathoff method, section 9-2), special band "Regionally credible": Hospitality and culinary training here is built on an ASEAN-aligned curriculum with internships in hotels across the region. At the foot of the band: it is respected within Southeast Asian hospitality and unknown beyond it.

Confidence
made by us from the source
Industry accessThe quota bites hardest in exactly these jobs

Pathoff outcome rubric (the Pathoff method, section 10-3), special outcome band "A route that needs an employer": Judged on its own and it lands below the degree route, because the foreign-worker quota and the labour-ministry permit are aimed squarely at the service and trade roles a hospitality qualification leads to. At the foot of the band, though the right to remain in the country survives the job here as elsewhere.

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

Cambodia is one of the few countries on this site whose vocational sector actually publishes what a foreigner pays: Phnom Penh’s culinary academy prints both rates side by side, with the international one at $9,600 for a two-year diploma. The training is built around Cambodian hospitality and its internships are here, which is also its limit — the qualification travels no further than the region.

How the process works

1

Apply to the academy directly

The international rate is published alongside the Cambodian one.

⏱ 1–3 months
2

Ordinary visa, extended annually

The same route a resident uses; no separate training permit exists.

⏱ 2–4 weeks

Where the training is

Phnom Penh
The culinary academy and the hotel kitchens it places into
Siem Reap
The oldest hospitality school in the country, and the tourism economy

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.