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).
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 =)
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.)
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?
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 =)
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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