More than 100,000 college graduates fail board exams yearly

MANILA, Philippines - The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) reported yesterday that most college graduates in the country fail to pass licensure examinations.

Data from the PRC showed that more than a hundred thousand examinees are flunking licensure examinations annually.

Last year alone, close to 200,000 college graduates who took different licensure examinations flunked.

Based on PRC data, a total of 304,586 examinees took licensure exams in different fields. Of the figure, only 36.9 percent or 112,407 passed.

Those who took the licensure exam to become customs brokers recorded the lowest passing rate of 22.9 percent, followed by librarians at 23.6 percent.

Only the examinees for geologists, guidance counselors, mining engineers, ecological pharmacologists, and optometrists (six-years curriculum) posted over 60 to 70 percent passing rate.

Other professions recorded only between 30 to 50 percent passing rates.

For the first quarter of the year, the PRC reported less than 50 percent passing rate for those who took licensure exams.

Of the 11,564 college graduates who took the exam, only 5,354 or 46.3 percent passed, according to the PRC.

The PRC’s Board of Nursing (BON) previously reported a declining passing rate for nursing licensure exam for the past decade.

While the number of board examinees is on the rise since year 2000, BON member Marco Sto. Tomas said the passing rate exhibited a declining trend from a high of 55.8 percent in 1998 to a low of 45.2 percent in 2006, or an annual average of 49.5 percent.

This year, only 39 percent of nursing licensure examinees passed the board exam held last June.