House body names top 5 schools in CPA exams

MANILA, Philippines  -- University of the Philippines- Diliman and the De La Salle University-Manila were just two of the five universities  that have been recognized by the House committee on higher and technical education over the weekend  as among the top accounting schools in the country.

A report by the Philippine News Agency said the schools were recognized  based on the outstanding performance of their graduates in the last two Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licensure examinations run by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC).

Pasig City Rep. Roman Romulo, committee chairman, identified the top accounting colleges as follows, with the percentage of their examinees passing the last two CPA eligibility tests in brackets:

They are the University of the Philippines-Diliman (98.81 percent); De La Salle University-Manila (94.59 percent); Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (90.0 percent); University of Santo Tomas (89.65 percent); and Bicol University-Daraga (85.94 percent).

According to the PRC, some 36.10 percent or 5,799 out of 16,061 examinees passed the last two CPA qualifying tests in May and October 2013.

Citing PRC statistics, Romulo said the five schools were the only ones “with 50 or more examinees and with at least 80 percent of their examinees passing” the last two CPA licensure tests.

PRC and Commission on Higher Education (CHED) records show that the country has a total of 398 higher institutions of learning accredited to train would-be CPAs.

“As in the past, we are making this list public to help consumers of accounting education -- prospective accounting students and their parents -- decide for themselves as to where they will most likely get the best value for their hard earned tuition money,” Romulo said.

“There may be other accounting schools with at least 80 percent of their examinees passing the last two CPA eligibility tests, but these institutions were excluded from the list simply because they had less than 50 examinees,” Romulo said

He said accounting is among the top five most heavily subscribed programs in college, along with nursing, teaching, criminology, and civil engineering, wherein graduates must first pass a national licensure examination before they can practice their profession.

Meanwhile, Romulo also welcomed Bayer Business Services Philippines Inc.’s aggressive recruitment of Filipino accounting graduates for the “global finance and accounting shared service center” of the Bayer Group at the McKinley Hill Cyberpark in Taguig City.

Bayer Business Services provides a wide range of finance and accounting services, based on standardized processes and best practices, for the Bayer Group.

Founded in Germany 151 years ago, the Bayer Group is a global enterprise that produces pharmaceutical and health care products, agricultural chemicals and high-tech materials.

Tasks handled by Bayer Business Services include transactional accounting such as general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, travel and expense, intercompany accounting, internal accounting, as well as general accounting, including closing, reporting and asset management.