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.
