TL;DR: International Studies has no CHED memorandum order, so the degree is whatever each school designs — De La Salle builds it around country and region majors with a language attached, Miriam College builds it around thematic tracks. There is no PRC board exam. It is not required for a diplomatic career either: the DFA examination takes graduates of any four-year degree. Compare curricula, not programme names.
International Studies is one of the harder Philippine degrees to research honestly, because the name covers genuinely different programmes and there is no national standard to measure them against. This guide sets out what is fixed, what is not, and what to check before committing four years.
No CHED standard, and why that matters
CHED sets minimum standards for degree programmes through Policies, Standards and Guidelines issued as memorandum orders. There is one for political science (CMO 51, s. 2017), one for history (CMO 38, s. 2017), one for economics (CMO 32, s. 2017), one for sociology (CMO 40, s. 2017). CHED's published index of memorandum orders contains no PSG for international studies.
The programme is offered instead under the academic freedom that Section 13 of Republic Act No. 7722 grants higher education institutions in their curricular offerings, subject to the general education distribution requirements CHED sets for every bachelor programme.
That is not a criticism of the degree — plenty of respected programmes sit outside the PSG system. But it has three practical effects:
- There is no minimum unit count you can hold a school to, and no prescribed course list.
- Two programmes with the same name can be very different degrees. One may be four years of area studies and language; another may be four years of development and gender theory.
- Comparison is entirely on you. The published curriculum is the document that matters, not the brochure.
Two real programmes, built on different logics
Area majors — the De La Salle model
De La Salle University describes its Bachelor of Arts in International Studies as an interdisciplinary programme equipping students with "the foundations of international relations and global society, the theoretical and practical knowledge from country, region, or area studies, and a cosmopolitan mindset." Students choose an area major; DLSU publishes programme pages for American Studies, European Studies, Japanese Studies and Chinese Studies, and notes that all of them carry basic to intermediate foreign language components.
The European Studies major (AB-ISE) is the one DLSU documents most fully. Its published programme overview gives 158 total academic units and 9 non-academic units — a school-specific figure, on DLSU's own term structure, not a national standard, and not comparable line-for-line with a semestral school's unit count. The description covers EU institutions, policies and the integration process, alongside international relations, history, politics, economics and culture, with the opportunity to study French, Italian or Spanish.
DLSU also publishes a combined degree pairing International Studies major in European Studies with BS Applied Corporate Management, which is the kind of arrangement worth asking about if you want a business fallback attached.
Thematic tracks — the Miriam College model
Miriam College takes the other approach. Its Bachelor of Science in International Studies offers two specialised tracks — International Politics and Peace Studies and Global Development and Gender Studies — and the college describes the programme as giving students "the global perspectives, theories and tools to understand historical and contemporary political, economic, social and cultural changes affecting the country, Asian region, and the world." Named subjects include Theories and Perspectives in International Studies and International Economics and the Global Economy.
Miriam separately offers a Bachelor of Arts in Global Affairs and Diplomacy, which it describes as specialising in the analysis of political and economic issues contingent on humanitarian diplomacy, covering foreign policy, international law, economic and humanitarian operations, area studies and diplomatic negotiation, with Model UN-style simulations built into the year-by-year assessment.
Neither model is better. An area major gives you depth in one region and a usable language; a thematic track gives you a lens you can apply anywhere. Which suits you depends on whether you already know the part of the world you care about.
Is there a board exam?
No. The Professional Regulation Commission publishes a list of 46 Professional Regulatory Boards covering the regulated professions — accountancy, nursing, criminology, social work, the licensed engineering fields and the rest. International studies is not among them. There is no licensure examination, no certificate of registration, nothing to renew.
Graduates can therefore work immediately, with no review period and no exam fee. The corollary is that nothing certifies you, so the degree has to produce demonstrable output — research, language ability, internships, published writing — rather than a credential.
For the full picture of which Philippine degrees are licensed and which are not, see courses with board exams.
The diplomatic career question
Most people arrive at International Studies because of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Two facts are worth having straight before you enrol.
First, the DFA examination does not require this degree. The Board of Foreign Service Examinations requires applicants to be graduates of a four-year bachelor degree course or higher, without specifying a field.
Second, no degree lets you take it straight out of college. Recent cycles have required at least two years of employment or completed further studies after graduation. Everyone waits.
The examination itself runs in four sequential stages — a Qualifying Test, a Written Test, a Psychological Test and an Oral Test — and the Board publishes the schedule, passing marks and requirements per cycle. We do not reproduce dates or cut-offs here because they change; check the DFA's current announcement. Our AB Foreign Service guide goes through the mechanics in more detail, including how the Career Service Examination for Foreign Service Officer now functions as the qualifying stage.
Where graduates actually go
De La Salle's published career list for the programme is a reasonable map of the field: foreign policy analyst and strategic studies roles in public and private organisations; foreign service, diplomacy, and work in embassies and international organisations such as the UN, IMF and World Bank, ADB and ASEAN; tourism; translation and interpretation; entrepreneurship, business and corporate roles; the service industry; media and journalism; and academia, teaching and research, with MA and PhD study as an onward route.
Read that list for what it implies. The high-profile destinations — DFA, UN system — are small, competitive and usually reached after further study or several years of work. The bulk of graduates land in corporate, NGO, media and research roles where the degree's value is analytical writing, cross-cultural fluency and a second language.
We are not publishing salary figures for these roles. The range across an NGO programme officer, a corporate market analyst and an embassy's locally engaged staff is so wide that a single number would be actively misleading.
If graduate study is likely, the two degrees that pair most usefully with international studies are economics and communication — see BS Economics and AB Communication for what those cover, since both do have CHED memorandum orders behind them.
How it compares
| Degree | Built around | CHED order | Board exam |
|---|---|---|---|
| BA/BS International Studies | A region, country or global system, usually with a language | None issued | None |
| AB Foreign Service | The practice of diplomacy — protocol, consular work, foreign policy | None issued | None |
| AB Political Science | Government, institutions, political theory | CMO 51, s. 2017 | None |
| BS Economics | Economic theory and quantitative method | CMO 32, s. 2017 | None |
If a standardised curriculum matters to you, political science and economics have one and international studies does not. If a region and a language matter to you, international studies is where those are actually taught.
What to ask before you enrol
- The complete published curriculum, term by term. With no CHED order, this is the only comparable document.
- Which language, how many levels, and is it actually offered every year? Small programmes sometimes cannot run a language cohort in a given term.
- What the thesis or capstone requirement is. For an unlicensed research-heavy degree, this is the main piece of evidence you graduate with.
- Whether exchange or study-abroad is real. Many programmes advertise partnerships; ask how many students went last year and what it cost.
- What graduates did next, with numbers rather than anecdotes.
Senior high students still choosing a track should read our HUMSS strand courses guide. HUMSS is the usual feeder, but it is not a formal requirement at most schools.
Cost
We are not quoting tuition. International studies is a non-laboratory programme and usually sits at the lower end of a private school's range, and state universities and colleges charge no tuition for qualified students under the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act. The costs that surprise families here are the optional ones — language certification, exchange semesters, Model UN travel. Ask which are required and which are extras, and get the current per-term rate in writing.
Should you take it?
Take International Studies if you genuinely enjoy reading about other countries, writing long arguments, and learning a language, and if you accept that the payoff is a set of skills rather than a credential. Do not take it because it looks like the fastest route into the DFA. It is not a route at all — it is one of many degrees that qualify, and the queue is the same length for everyone.
Ready to compare schools? Browse programmes and tuition across hundreds of Philippine schools on SchoolFinderPH.
Sources
- De La Salle University — Bachelor of Arts in International Studies major in European Studies (programme overview and unit counts)
- De La Salle University — Bachelor of Arts in International Studies major in American Studies
- De La Salle University — Bachelor of Arts in International Studies major in Japanese Studies
- De La Salle University — Bachelor of Arts in International Studies major in Chinese Studies
- Miriam College — Bachelor of Science in International Studies
- Miriam College — Bachelor of Arts in Global Affairs and Diplomacy
- Embassy of the Republic of the Philippines, Washington D.C. — Foreign Service Officer Examinations announcement
- Commission on Higher Education — 2017 CHED Memorandum Orders index (no PSG listed for international studies)
- Professional Regulation Commission — Professional Regulatory Boards
