TL;DR: There is no CHED degree called "BS Human Resource Management." HRM is one of the five majors inside BSBA, governed by CHED Memorandum Order No. 17, series of 2017, signed 9 May 2017 and implemented from AY 2018-2019. The major itself is eight courses worth 24 units, on top of a 24-unit business administration core and a 600-hour internship. There is no PRC board exam for HR — it is not one of the Professional Regulation Commission's 46 Professional Regulatory Boards.
If you have been searching for "BS Human Resource Management," you will have noticed schools list it inconsistently — sometimes as BSBA-HRM, sometimes as BSBA Major in HRM, occasionally just "HRM," which in some schools still means Hotel and Restaurant Management. This guide works from the CHED order itself so you know what is prescribed and what is the individual school's choice.
What CHED actually prescribes
The governing document is CHED Memorandum Order No. 17, series of 2017, "Revised Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration." Section 5.1 names five majors that may be offered under BSBA: Human Resource Management, Marketing Management, Financial Management, Operations Management and Business Economics.
CMO 17 describes the HRM major in one sentence: it "prepares the graduate for a career in the Human Resources Department of any organization, handling the many diverse human capital requirements of the organization, including recruitment, staffing, training and career development."
The order was signed on 9 May 2017 by then-chairperson Patricia B. Licuanan, and Section 30 says the minimum curricular requirements were to be implemented starting Academic Year 2018-2019. That date matters: it is a post-K-12 order, so the unit counts in it describe the current General Education curriculum, not the pre-2016 one. Many older course guides online still quote unit totals from the 2006 BSBA standards, which no longer describe what a student enrols in today.
For the full structure of the degree — the 122-unit minimum and how the five majors sit inside it — see our BSBA subjects guide.
The eight HRM major courses
Section 12 of CMO 17 sets the professional major for HRM at 24 units across eight 3-unit courses:
| Major course | Units |
|---|---|
| Administrative and Office Management | 3 |
| Labor Law and Legislation | 3 |
| Recruitment and Selection | 3 |
| Training and Development | 3 |
| Compensation Administration | 3 |
| Labor Relations and Negotiations | 3 |
| Special Topics in Human Resource Management | 3 |
| Organizational Development | 3 |
| Total | 24 |
Read that list carefully, because it tells you what the degree is actually about. Half of it — Labor Law and Legislation, Labor Relations and Negotiations, Compensation Administration — is regulatory and contractual work. HR in the Philippines is a compliance-heavy function, and the CHED-prescribed curriculum reflects that far more than it reflects the "people and culture" framing you see in job ads.
What sits underneath the major
Before you reach those eight courses you take the business administration core, also 24 units, which is common to every BSBA major: Basic Microeconomics, Business Law (Obligations and Contracts), Taxation (Income Taxation), Good Governance and Social Responsibility, Human Resource Management, International Business and Trade, Business Research, and a Thesis or Feasibility Study. There is also a 6-unit set of common business and management courses — Operations Management (TQM) and Strategic Management.
Note that Human Resource Management appears in the core as a single 3-unit course that every BSBA student takes. The HRM major is what you get when eight more courses are stacked on top of that one.
The 12 units of electives
CMO 17 lists suggested electives for the HRM major rather than prescribing them: Marketing Management, Management, Managerial Accounting, Entrepreneurial Management, Logistics Management, Environmental Management System, Global/International Trade, Project Management and Personal Finance. Twelve units are required; which four courses your school actually offers is a school decision, and it is a fair question to ask at an open house.
How the four years are sequenced
The sample programme of study in Section 14 runs eight semesters. First year is entirely general education, PE and NSTP. Business administration core courses begin in second year, the first professional major course appears in the second semester of second year, and the load thins out in fourth year to make room for the practicum, which sits in the final semester alongside one elective.
Two practical consequences. First, you will not touch a recognisably HR subject until your second year, so if you are choosing between majors you have time. Second, because the practicum is at the very end, a delayed or badly matched placement delays graduation — worth asking how the school handles students whose placement falls through.
The 600-hour internship
Section 22 sets the internship at 600 hours, credited as 6 units. The CMO frames it as integrating theory with practice in a real work environment, and it deliberately leaves the specifics open: the "decision on the nature, location, and activities of the practicum are arrived at from discussion and agreement made among the school administrators, faculty advisor, Practicum site supervisor, and the students."
For an HRM student that flexibility cuts both ways. A placement inside a real HR department — sitting in on interviews, processing 201 files, helping run an onboarding batch — is the single most useful thing on a fresh graduate's CV. A placement that turns into general admin work is not. Since CHED does not specify the content, the only way to know is to ask the school where its last two batches of HRM interns were placed, by name.
Is there a board exam for HR?
No. The Professional Regulation Commission maintains 46 Professional Regulatory Boards covering professions such as accountancy, nursing, criminology, social work and the licensed engineering fields. Human resource management is not among them. There is no HR licensure examination, no PRC certificate of registration for HR practitioners, and nothing to renew.
That is genuinely good news for your timeline — no review centre, no exam fee, no waiting period between graduation and your first job. It also means nothing on paper separates you from the very large number of other BSBA graduates applying for the same HR assistant role. Employers substitute other filters: where you interned, how you communicate, whether you can talk about the Labor Code without reading from a slide.
If you specifically want a regulated profession, our list of courses with board exams compares the licensed routes side by side. If you want HR work and a licence, the psychology route is the one to look at — see BS Psychology, which leads to the psychometrician licensure examination and still feeds into HR departments.
HRM compared with the near neighbours
| Degree | What it is built around | Licensure exam |
|---|---|---|
| BSBA major in HRM | The HR function inside an organisation — hiring, pay, training, labour relations | None |
| BS Psychology | Human behaviour and research methods; industrial/organisational psychology is one field | Yes — psychometrician, and psychologist at graduate level |
| BS Office Administration | Office systems, records and administrative operations | None |
| BSBA major in Financial Management | Financial decision-making inside an organisation | None |
The overlap people underestimate is with BS Office Administration. Administrative and Office Management is literally the first course in the HRM major list, and small companies frequently merge the two roles. If your target employer is an SME rather than a large corporate HR department, look at both programmes before deciding.
The overlap people overestimate is with law. Labor Law and Legislation is one 3-unit course. It teaches you to read the rules, not to practise.
What to ask a school before you enrol
CHED fixes most of the curriculum, so the real differences between schools sit in the parts CMO 17 leaves to the institution. Four questions worth asking:
- Who teaches the law subjects? Section 20 requires that all business law courses be handled by lawyers and all taxation subjects by CPAs or lawyers. It is fair to ask who is assigned to Labor Law and Legislation.
- How qualified is the faculty overall? CMO 17 requires at least 75% of business and professional courses to be taught by faculty with business or related graduate degrees, at least a third of those by faculty with related doctorates, and no more than 25% of such courses to be taught by industry practitioners without graduate degrees. At least 50% of business and professional subjects should be handled by full-time faculty.
- Where do HRM interns go? As above — names, not categories.
- Is the major CHED-covered? If a school advertises a business major outside CHED's five — People Analytics, Talent Management, and similar — Section 18.12 requires the HEI to hold Level III accreditation in BSBA or a related undergraduate business programme before offering a major the CMO does not cover. Ask.
Senior high students still choosing a track should read the ABM strand guide. ABM is not a hard requirement, but CMO 17 states the BSBA curriculum is vertically aligned with it and tells schools to offer bridging courses for students who came from another strand.
What it costs
We will not put a peso figure on this. Business programmes carry no laboratory, clinical or equipment costs, so within any private school they usually sit at the cheaper end of the tuition range, and state universities and colleges charge no tuition for qualified students under the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act. Beyond that, rates are set per school and revised every year — get the current per-semester figure, plus miscellaneous and practicum-related fees, in writing from the admissions office.
Should you take it?
Take HRM if you are comfortable with rules, records and difficult conversations, and if you want a function that exists in every organisation regardless of industry. Do not take it because it sounds like the "people" major — the CHED curriculum is closer to employment law and administration than to counselling.
And be honest about the credential gap. Without a board exam, the four years have to produce the evidence: a real internship, a thesis or feasibility study you can talk about, and enough command of the Labor Code to be useful in week one.
Ready to compare schools? Browse business programmes and tuition across hundreds of Philippine schools on SchoolFinderPH.
Sources
- CHED Memorandum Order No. 17, series of 2017 — Revised Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (full PDF, read directly)
- Commission on Higher Education — 2017 CHED Memorandum Orders index
- Professional Regulation Commission — Professional Regulatory Boards
