Distance Learning in Phillipines

The state run University of the Philippines <http://www.up.edu.ph> is the premier state university of the Philippines, developed by the Americans in the early 1900s and is patterned as a land grant university. It has several campuses, the central campus in Diliman is known for its humanities, fine arts, engineering and social science programs. The campus in Los Banos is known as one of the centers of agriculture and natural resources education in Asia (the world-renowned International Rice Research Institute is located on its campus); the campus in Manila is known for its health sciences programs; while the Visayas campus is noted for its aquaculture and fisheries programs. There are two other regional campuses and the latest campus is the Open University which offers the University's distance education programs. The distance education master's programs are popular and many of the students are employed in private or public agencies. I know of several students from overseas who were able to complete their master's degrees online. It is a different story for the two PhD programs (science/math education; communication): it may require some campus attendance during the summer...and the summer in the Philippines comes earlier: April to May, so it does not match the summer breaks of the US and European systems. On the plus side, it is incredibly inexpensive: approximately USD 20/credit although international students have to pay out an additional USD 500/semester. University of the Philippines diplomas also have no problem getting equivalence from WES, IERDF and other credential evaluators. On the downside, in the Philippines, those getting diplomas from the Open University campus are often looked down by most traditional academics. This is not an issue for those not involved in higher education and who are employed in private or public agencies who just need an advanced degree for professional and personal advancement.

The Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology is a different story. It is one of the hundreds of publicly funded state colleges and universities through out the country which came into being because of political concessions (usually through a bill of the local Congressman). Hence, they also suffer from low operating budgets and as a result have low quality reviews. The Commission of Higher Education is currently taking steps to close down some of these schools who have poor passing rates in professional board examinations, or merge those schools into regional university systems.

 

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