I’mACE Student Magazine talked with US Ambassador William Heidt during the AmCham Young Entrepreneurs Committee launch. I’m ACE asked the Ambassador about education and economic development. The event was recently held at ACE’s Toul Tom Poung Campus.

How important is STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) education to the future of Cambodia’s economic development?

I think STEAM subjects are very important for Cambodia. Cambodia reached the point now, where it has the middle income country. It is developing rapidly, but it has a way to go and those kind of STEAM skills are very important to building out diversify, more sophisticated country with stronger services sector, more competitive manufacture. So, I think it is very important. 

How important is it to engage young people in the process of entrepreneurism and how can this best be done in an emerging economy like Cambodia with a high demographic dividend of young people?

So America is a country where it is very famous for our entrepreneurs. There are famous people like Kendra For who developed the mass production of automobile and think about Apple or Bill Gates. That is something that we care a lot of about entrepreneurs and I think it is both an attitude, a willingness to take risk, to take chances, to try new things in the set of skills. Cambodia has the attitude; Khmer people are very good business people. They are very smart at fixing things; there are a lot of small businesses in Cambodia, but the second parts, the skill needs to be strengthened. So I think it is really important for company, for organization like ACE, to work on developing those skills. Things like analyzing markets, general business skills, networking skills and things like that because it is really important for entrepreneur and there are a lot of young people in Cambodia that need those skills.

What challenges does Cambodia face in effectively engaging young people to increase labour competitiveness and economic development in Cambodia?

To me, I am an economist. To me, the single most important factor for Cambodia and thinking of economist future is labor market skills. If we see in all of every sectors in Cambodia, there is a shortage of skills and the extend toward the Cambodian government working with its partners can develop those skills to create a training programs, to internships, to help from overseas, the better Cambodia, the faster it develops and I think American company that has shown one of the best in the world, at quickly developing local talent.

The US supports a number of English language learning initiatives in Cambodia including being a long term stakeholder in the annual CamTESOL conference. How important is it for young people in the ASEAN region to have strong English language skills?

To me, Cambodia is doing well on English skill already. I think small country that still developing, that is a pretty high level of English fluency, but to be honest, to be competitive in ASEAN, in specially if you think about it, if you want to be competitive in exporting services, in providing services to other ASEAN countries you have to have good English and we do a lot in the embassy, we have an English access micro scholarship program for the advantages of young people. We do support CamTESOL as you said, we have fellow around the country, and we run a variety of exchange programs. We do a lot but also private education companies like this are very important as well.

The US is one of the most popular destinations for young, educated Cambodians to study overseas. What skills and benefits can a US education bring to an understanding of entrepreneurism and economic development? What role can US alumni play in helping generate and engage in entrepreneurism when they return to Cambodia?

So I am bias because I am an American, but I think honestly are universities in United States are best in the world and what they are really good at is integrating subjects together and a lot of American schools have integrated the substance   of study business along with skills like entrepreneur and they have some very powerful programs down in United States. I think that is the best place for Cambodian students to study. We have about 500 Cambodian students in the United States and that number got up by 25% in the last 3 years. So, we have English advisors at Pannasastra University who help kid work through the information they need to study in United States. So, that is something I recommended for all young Cambodians to take crack at.