LLE: The Best and Worst LIS Schools, 2007-2025 - 3

In the second part of this series, I wrote that the LIS schools whose graduates took the Librarian Licensure Examination (LLE) from 2007 to 2025 were divided arbitrarily (so don't ask me to justify it hehe) into four groups: 

• Division 1, those with 101 or more first-time examinees over the entire period of 18 years
• Division 2, those with 11 to 100
• Division 3, those with 1 to 10
• Division 4, those with no first-timers (because all their examinees were repeaters)

In this post, I will offer some observations about the Top 10 from Division 2, which has 57 schools (out of 280), but with more than 29% of first-time examinees (or 2,363 out of 8,135).

1. ALL of the Top 10 schools in Division 2 are located OUTSIDE Metro Manila: 5 from Luzon, 1 from the Visayas, and 4 from Mindanao. They rarely have more than 5 examinees every year, but their alumni have at least an 80% chance of passing the LLE.
2. The Top 2—Notre Dame of Dadiangas University (NDDU) in South Cotabato and Saint Louis University (SLU) in Baguio—are even better. 44 of 45 NDDU first-timers passed in 14 years, and 68 of 70 SLU first-timers passed in 13 years. Almost 100%! They may have fewer graduates, but they train them well.
3. Special mention goes to University of Southeastern Philippines in Davao City & Cagayan State University in Tuguegarao because their LIS programs seem to have started only recently, but the quantity and quality of their first-timers since 2023 have been stellar! I hope their numbers continue to grow.
4. Sadly, 4 of the schools in the Top 10 of Division 2 have only had 2, 1, or even 0 students take the LLE in the last 5 years. It looks like they were adversely affected by the pandemic.
5. Finally, the preponderance of provincial schools in Divisions 1 AND 2 reminds me of something that the #NationalNonLibrarian once said at a budget meeting presided by a congresswoman from the House of Representatives, “Yung mga nasa probinsya po, wala talagang course na nag-ooffer ng librarianship doon.” Don’t me!

My next post will examine Divisions 3 and 4, and why I will not be sharing any list of the worst schools. But allow me to repeat—again—what I wrote in "The Best and the Worst LIS Schools, 2007-2009":

Why am I doing this? There is very little information available to students regarding the quality of LIS schools, and it is my hope that this effort of mine can provoke more detailed studies. Plus, if even one prospective LIS student looks at these tables and decides to go to one school, instead of another, then the time I've spent on this would have been worth it. 

Note: The data used for this post are from the PRC press releases about the LLE results from 2007 to 2025. 

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LLE: The Best and Worst LIS Schools, 2007-2025 - 2

DIVISION 1

Schools with 101 or more first-time examinees

The LIS schools whose graduates took the Librarian Licensure Examination (LLE) from 2007 to 2025 were divided arbitrarily (so don't ask me to justify it hehe) into four groups: 

• Division 1, those with 101 or more first-time examinees over the entire period of 18 years
• Division 2, those with 11 to 100
• Division 3, those with 1 to 10
• Division 4, those with no first-timers (because all their examinees were repeaters)

In this post, I will offer some observations about the Top 10 from Division 1, which has 24 schools (out of 280), but with more than 67% of first-time examinees (or 5,476 out of 8,135).

1. The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) usually enumerates the top performing schools following the release of a particular year's LLE results. The minimum number of examinees from a school to justify inclusion on the list varies (from 5 to 50!), but the passing percentage is always 80%. If I were to follow PRC's lead, only 3 schools would be in the list above. But since Top 10 looks better to me, we have more schools to discuss =)

2. No one, I hope, was surprised to see University of the Philippines (UP) at the top of the list. It seems that any UP grad who takes the LLE is almost guaranteed to pass in any given year. In 2007, I wrote, "What does UP have that other schools don't? Could it have something to do with the admission process? Or maybe many—most?—of the [LIS] schools don't really have enough faculty, facilities, or funding to adequately cater to the needs of their students?" Or both? No one has yet offered an answer. (Disclosure: My MLIS is from UP.)

3. Eight out of 10 graduates from the Top 2 and 3 schools—Philippine Normal University (PNU) and  University of Santo Tomas (UST)—are likely to pass the LLE. If you're a betting person, those are good odds. These two schools, along with UP, are among the oldest educational institutions in the Philippines, and that's probably why they're in the Top 3 (because they must have good faculty and more than enough resources to survive for so long). All 3 are also in Metro Manila, but could that be part of the reason they produce so many LLE passers?

4. Nope. Seven of the Top 10 schools are located outside Metro Manila: 4 from Luzon, 2 from the Visayas (Cebu, specifically), and 1 from Mindanao (Davao del Sur). Benguet State University (BSU) - La Trinidad is particularly impressive because I didn't know they had that many LIS grads taking the LLE. Almost as many as UP. Who knows, BSU might just move up the list given more time =)

5. Finally, in case you didn't notice, there is a column in the table for "YEARS." I added this column because the reality is that most LIS schools don't have grads who can take the LLE every year. So I was pleasantly surprised to see City College of Calapan (CCC) in the Top 10. While all the others had 16, 17, or 18 years, CCC had 8! And not because there were years when none of their grads took the exam. Their alumni started taking the LLE in 2016, but they've already consistently ranked higher than other schools of similar size or larger, but with more decades of LLE experience. It would be interesting to know how they did it. Other LIS schools might benefit from listening to their story.

My next post will examine Division 2 more closely. But allow me to repeat what I wrote in "The Best and the Worst LIS Schools, 2007-2009":

Why am I doing this? There is very little information available to students regarding the quality of LIS schools, and it is my hope that this effort of mine can provoke more detailed studies. Plus, if even one prospective LIS student looks at these tables and decides to go to one school, instead of another, then the time I've spent on this would have been worth it.

Note: The data used for this post are from the PRC press releases about the LLE results from 2007 to 2025.

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LLE: The Best and Worst LIS Schools, 2007-2025 - 1

In 2010, I wrote in "The Best and the Worst LIS Schools, 2007-2009" that 

There are many ways of determining the "best" and the "worst." For this unofficial ranking, the best and worst library and information science (LIS) schools in the Philippines may be identified using the aggregate passing rates for each school whose graduates took the Librarians' Licensure Examination [LLE] for the first time in 2007, 2008 and 2009, the only years for which detailed results per school are available. 

Now, 16 years later, this ranking remains unofficial (hehe) and it will continue to rely on the the aggregate passing rates for each school, but this time from 2007 to 2025. There is much more to be said now than before, so this will be spread out over a series of posts. Today we begin with the number of LIS schools whose graduates took the LLE for the first time over almost two decades.

Just by looking at the graph, it's fairly easy to see that the number of schools has been between 80 and 90 for most of the period covered, if we are talking about Total Examinees, and that this number goes down to between 50 and 70 for the same period, if we limit discussion to First Timers. The exceptions are the period before 2010 (when a significant number of examinees tried to beat the deadline for those who did not finish LIS degrees), 2020 (when there were no exams due to COVID), and 2021 (when there was still a lot of apprehension due to COVID).

Why is the number of LIS schools over the period covered important? Because this tells us that they have increased in number slowly from 2010 onward, and this is also the reason for the increase in first-time examinees. There are, of course, some schools with more than 20 alumni who take the LLE for the first time every year, but the great majority do not usually have an examinee every year, not even a repeater. This will become clearer when I share the table of schools with their passing rates for each of the past 18 years.

Note: The data used for this post are from the PRC press releases about the LLE results from 2007 to 2025.

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