BCU Graduate Tops November 2008 Philippine Nursing Exam

Baguio City is abuzz with news since the results of the November 2008 Philippine Nursing board exams was released a few days ago.

We congratulate Jovie Ann Alawas Decoyna of Baguio Central University (BCU) who topped the board, with 89%. She came first out of 39,455 or 44.51% of 88,649 examinees passed Nursing Licensure Examinations for November 2008.

Our very own Saint Louis University (SLU) ties with Central Philippine University and Southern Luzon Polytechnic College-Lucban at 3rd place in the top 10 best performing schools with a 97% passing rate.

We have to note here that Central Philippine University at 97.46% actually did slightly better than SLU at 97.44% while SLU did better than Southern Luzon Polytechnic College-Lucban at 97.16%. This is because when the Philippines Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC) releases results it rounds off the percentages!

Honestly, to rank the schools according to performance even the decimals in percentages matter so that we can reflect the schools rankings better.

For this purpose, I included the conditional passers with the successful examinees in the computation above because these guys actually passed the tests but there are some requirements that have yet to be fulfilled. Am being kind here.

If, on the other hand conditional passers would not be included in the percentage of passers, then SLU should be ranked 3rd, Southern Luzon Polytechnic College-Lucban 4th and Central Philippine University 5th. This makes a big difference!

And there were a lot of persons who tied for slots in the top 10. Actually, 72 persons landed in the top 10! So now many schools can rightfully claim topnotchers as usual. It’s probably because a whopping 88,649 persons took the exam with 39,455 becoming new nurses.

Three of my young friends, table tennis wards of Nico Cawed who insisted that they get good grades or they do not get to play the sport they are addicted to, passed!  I am so pleased! Princess and Valer whom we treated to the Balatoc Mines Tour last December and Meryll, all of whom were athletic scholars. The Baguio Table Tennis League (BTTL) can now claim a 100% passing average.

Let’s see how well the other schools in Baguio City fared in the said exams:

NAME OF SCHOOL	PASSED	FAILED	TOTAL	% PASSED	2007DEC%
Saint Louis University (SLU)	114	3	117	97.44%	98.63%
University of the Cordilleras (UC)	591	264	856	69.04%	52.67%
University of Baguio (UB)	578	659	1239	46.65%	48.93%
Baguio Central University (BCU)	256	497	755	33.91%	38.69%
Pines City Educational Center (PCEC)	479	1073	1554	30.82%	38.36%
TOTAL	2018	2496	4521	44.79%	43.50%

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If you will look at the results, only the University of the Cordilleras raised its passing average. This is a marked improvement of from its previous 53% to 69%, although I still would not feel comfortable sending my child to study nursing in a school without its own hospital.

Of course UB and PCEC are performing even worse than last year. And to think that UB asked its March 2008 not to take the June 2008 exam and take the one later in the year so they could prepare better. I know this because my three young friends, the three BTTL players graduated in March 2008 yet and reviewed for a pretty long time before taking the nursing exam.

In general, we can say that Baguio City’s overall performance is merely average. 44.51% is the Philippines’ national average for this exam, and only 44.79% of Baguio students passed.

Maybe we should start putting up welcome signs saying “Welcome to the Average Educational Center of the North” to replace those now contestable “Cleanest and Greenest Highly Urbanized City” claims!

Sarcasm, Lisa is thy name.

Baguio Central University from which the topnotcher and two others in the top 10 came from is still one of the poorest performers, lowering its passing average to just 34% from almost 39% in December 2007.

If the topnotcher came from BCU does that make BCU the best school in the Philippines for nursing? Definitely not!  The best performing Philippine school is according to this report is Xavier University with a 99% passing average.

Many will argue, it is up to the student. To a great extent, it is up to the student to top an exam. But I still maintain it is up to the school to have a superior program to give ALL its students a fair chance to pass the exams. After all, that is why the students pay the tuition and add their time and efforts towards becoming professionals.

The schools are suppliers of knowledge and trainers of skills, and to a huge extent they should also be molding attitudes, especially for the nursing programs and other professions that involve service.

The students are the paying customers.

After all schools in the Philippines, especially those in Baguio City, are now run as huge businesses, and not as vocations anymore, judging by all those “extras” students are made to pay for like various uniforms, excursions and other activities, judging by the lack of concern for the safety and welfare of their students by stuffing tens of thousands of them into crowded maze-like building clusters.

I say this also because considering some hugely populated Baguio universities have virtually “appropriated” the public areas of Baguio City surrounding their building clusters as part of their “campus” because Baguio universities like UC or UB, or even PCEC do not have a “real” campus where students can hang out in — this means, too, that their overhead and maintenance expenses are pretty low compared to the good schools of Manila like UP Diliman and Ateneo, or even Silliman University in Dumaguete — they should give their students more value for their money.

An official of UC remarked to me once, “Why should we provide a field when there’s always Burnham Park right across us?” Um, does UC even possess title to that prime government land on Governor Pack and Harrison Roads in Baguio City that it has been occupying for decades?

Their customers must not be short-changed. It is possible to have ALL their students pass the board exams. SLU used to have a 100% passing average. And this was even before it used started admitting 1,500 into the program and forcing the rest to shift courses if they did not land in the top 500 upon entering junior year. And there are schools with similar passing averages than SLU who do not necessarily whittle down their students from an original enrollment of 1,500 to just a few hundred or so. Xavier University passed 336 of their 341 examinees (99%), the same way Central Philippines Universty passed 496 of its 512 examineess (97%)!

I have strong opinions about this policy of theirs because I suspect that SLU is merely using the popularity of the  nursing course to populate their other medical courses. If SLU for example, did not set a number and instead set an average grade that students must reach to get into the nursing program, whether there are more or less than 500 entering junior year, I would think it a better policy because it is based on a student competing “against himself (or herself)” instead of competing to get ahead of the pack.

It is better to set a goal, like an average grade that one must reach, no matter how high to get into junior year than telling a student to make sure he or she is doing better than 1000 others to get into the program. There’s a huge difference here.

The schools must do their part and not rely on a few students who happen to excel and carry their schools names along with their accomplishments to lure other persons to enroll in their schools. Again, BCU can have three in the top 10, but the whole school’s performance of 33% is even more dismal than the 39% a year earlier!

In the end, it is the passing average that is most important in terms of measuring a school’s competence. Schools who can manage to pass only a fraction of their graduates should be required to cut their enrollment to the percentage they can actually handle lest they be considered motivated by money and not the desire to help build a nation. Otherwise they would be accused of robbing the young children of a good future (and stealing their parents’ hard earned money).

Like I said before, that would be a crime.

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