Most Philippine college degrees have no board exam. The Professional Regulation Commission lists 46 Professional Regulatory Boards, each covering one regulated profession with its own licensure examination. Everything outside those 46 has no PRC exam standing between graduation and work.
That is the simple answer. The useful answer is more complicated, because "no board exam" gets misread in three expensive ways:
- as "nobody licenses this job" — often false
- as "no exam of any kind" — usually false if you want a government post
- as a permanent property of the course — definitely false
This guide covers all three. For the mapping of the 46 regulated professions to their feeder degrees, see our complete list of courses with board exams.
Four professions licensed outside the PRC
The PRC is not the only licensing body in the country. If your plan involves any of these fields, "not on the PRC list" tells you nothing useful.
| Profession | Licensing body | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Lawyers | Supreme Court of the Philippines | Bar examination administered by the Court |
| Marine deck and engine officers | Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) | Republic Act 10635, approved 13 March 2014 |
| Pilots, aircraft mechanics, dispatchers, air traffic controllers | Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines | Republic Act 9497, Civil Aviation Authority Act of 2008 |
| Teachers in the public system | PRC Board for Professional Teachers | Within the 46 — included here because people forget it |
The maritime case is the one that catches people out most, because it moved. RA 10635 transferred to MARINA all the powers, duties and functions the PRC previously held over the "examination, licensing and certification system for marine deck and engine officers" under the Philippine Merchant Marine Officers Act of 1998. So a maritime graduate is very much sitting an exam — just not a PRC one, which is also why maritime licensure appears nowhere on the PRC board list.
Aviation works the same way. RA 9497 gives CAAP the power to issue "airman licenses," and the law defines an airman broadly enough to include pilots, mechanics, aeronautical engineers, flight radio operators, dispatchers and air traffic control operators.
Law is the third. Legal education itself sits with the Legal Education Board rather than CHED, and the bar examination is administered by the Supreme Court.
The exam most unlicensed graduates actually face
If you want a government job, there is usually still an exam — the Civil Service examination.
The reason licensed professionals rarely think about it is Republic Act 1080, which declares that "the bar examinations and the examinations given by the various boards of examiners of the Government are declared as civil service examinations." Passing a board exam therefore hands you civil service eligibility automatically, and the law adds that these benefits "shall not prescribe" — they do not expire.
Graduates of unlicensed courses get no such shortcut. If the position requires eligibility, you take the Civil Service exam yourself. Factor that into any comparison between a licensed and an unlicensed path aimed at public sector work.
Which popular degrees genuinely have no PRC exam
A 2025 review using CHED planning data identified the ten most-subscribed undergraduate programs in the country. Splitting that list by licensure is a good reality check on how the two paths compare in practice:
Have a PRC board: BS Criminology, Bachelor of Secondary Education and Bachelor of Elementary Education (Professional Teachers), BS Nursing, BS Civil Engineering, BS Accountancy.
Have no PRC board: BS Business Administration, BS Tourism Management and BS Hospitality Management, the computing degrees (BS Computer Science, BS Information Systems, BS Information Technology), Bachelor of Industrial Technology.
Outside that top ten, common unlicensed fields include communication and journalism, multimedia arts and animation, political science, legal management, marketing, economics, and most of the humanities.
Note what this list is not: it is not a ranking of value. Several of the country's better-paid and more in-demand fields sit on the unlicensed side, priced by employer demand rather than by a legal gate — see in-demand courses and highest-paying courses.
The trap: the exam may sit above the bachelor degree
A profession can be regulated without the bachelor degree being the qualification for its exam.
Guidance and counseling is the clearest case — the licence is normally reached through a master's degree. The psychologist licence likewise sits at graduate level, while the psychometrician licence is the bachelor-level entry point in the same field. Environmental planning is another where graduate study is the usual route.
So if you are told "psychology has a board exam," the accurate version is that psychology has two boards-level credentials at different educational levels, and which one you can sit depends on how far you study. Read the profession's own law and its Professional Regulatory Board rules before assuming a four-year degree is enough.
One board does not always mean one licence
Counting boards is not the same as counting licences, and the difference decides what a specific degree qualifies you for.
The clearest documented case is radiologic technology. Republic Act 7431, the Radiologic Technology Act of 1992, creates a single Board of Radiologic Technology that runs two examinations for two different registrations. Section 19 sets the qualification for each in one sentence: an applicant must hold "a baccalaureate degree in radiologic technology... if he applies for the radiologic technology examination or... an associate in radiologic technology diploma... if he applies for the x-ray technology examination."
The two licences carry different legal scopes. The Act defines x-ray technology as dealing with "the technical application of x-rays," while radiologic technology covers "the technical application of radiation, such as x-rays, beta rays, gamma rays, ultrasound and radio frequency rays, in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases."
Psychology works on a similar two-tier pattern, with the bachelor-level psychometrician registration and the graduate-level psychologist registration under the same board.
The practical rule: read the profession's own law, not the board name. "This field has a board exam" can mean the exam you are eligible for is not the one you thought.
Where TESDA fits
TESDA qualifications are not board exams and are not degrees, but they function as a licence-like credential in many trades. A National Certificate is awarded after competency assessment against a national training regulation, at Levels 1 to 4 of the Philippine Qualifications Framework.
Two differences from a PRC licence matter:
- An NC does not confer a legal monopoly on practice. Nobody is barred by law from doing most NC-covered work without one. Employers, however, frequently require it, and in some regulated workplaces it is effectively mandatory.
- Assessment is competency-based rather than a written licensure exam. You demonstrate the skill at an accredited assessment centre.
So a graduate of an unlicensed degree who also holds a relevant NC often has a stronger practical credential set than the degree alone suggests. Our TESDA NC levels explained guide covers what each level means.
The list is not fixed
Professions get regulated. When they do, everyone already working in them is suddenly in a licensed field.
The most recent clear example is speech-language pathology. Republic Act 11249 was signed on 22 March 2019, and required the creation of a Professional Regulatory Board of Speech Language Pathology under the PRC within 90 days, to "supervise and regulate the registration, licensure, and practice of speech language pathology in the Philippines." Before that law, the field had no PRC board at all.
The practical implication for a student today: check the PRC list at the time you are deciding, not against an article. Including this one. Any published list of unlicensed courses is a snapshot.
What replaces a licence in unlicensed fields
If there is no exam, employers substitute their own filters. In practice these are what actually gate entry:
- Portfolio and demonstrated work — dominant in design, multimedia, writing and development roles.
- Vendor and industry certifications — cloud, networking, security, project management and accounting-software credentials in IT and business roles.
- TESDA National Certificates — a recognised competency assessment that exists independently of any degree, as covered above.
- Civil Service eligibility — for government positions, as above.
- Employer examinations — banks, BPOs and large corporates commonly run their own.
None of these are legally required. All of them are practically required in the sense that people who have them get shortlisted.
How to check your own course properly
- Start from the job title, not the degree title. Ask what the role is legally called, then look for that profession.
- Check the PRC list of Professional Regulatory Boards. If it is not among the 46, no PRC exam exists for it.
- If the field involves ships, aircraft, or courts, check MARINA, CAAP and the Supreme Court instead.
- Read the profession's enabling law if one exists. It sets who may sit the exam and with what qualification — the level matters, as the counseling and psychology cases show.
- If you are aiming at government work, plan for the Civil Service exam unless you will hold a licence.
- Ask the school directly which licence, if any, its graduates typically pursue, and what proportion do.
If you are still weighing fields, our guide to choosing what course to take covers the decision, and how college programs are organised explains why licensed programs are structured so differently in the first place.
The short version
Roughly speaking: 46 professions have a PRC licensure exam, a handful more are licensed by other bodies, government work usually needs Civil Service eligibility, and everything else is gated by portfolio, certification and employer testing. A degree without a board exam is not a lesser degree — it is a degree where the filter happens somewhere other than an exam hall.
Sources
- Professional Regulation Commission, Professional Regulatory Boards — https://www.prc.gov.ph/professional-regulatory-boards
- Professional Regulation Commission, Republic Act No. 7431, the Radiologic Technology Act of 1992 — https://www.prc.gov.ph/uploaded/documents/Radiologic%20Technology-Law.pdf
- Philippine Qualifications Framework, level descriptors — https://pqf.gov.ph/Home/Details/4
- Republic Act No. 1080, declaring bar and board examinations as civil service examinations — https://lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1954/ra_1080_1954.html
- Republic Act No. 10635, establishing MARINA as the single maritime administration, approved 13 March 2014 — https://laws.chanrobles.com/republicacts/107_republicacts.php?id=10408
- Republic Act No. 9497, Civil Aviation Authority Act of 2008, Official Gazette — https://mirror.officialgazette.gov.ph/2008/03/04/republic-act-no-9497/
- Republic Act No. 11249, Speech Language Pathology Act of 2019 — https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/2/87172
- Philippine Institute for Development Studies, "Review of CHED Policies, Standards, and Guidelines (PSGs) Pre- and Post-K to 12 Reforms," Discussion Paper Series No. 2025-13 — https://pidswebs.pids.gov.ph/CDN/document/pidsdps2513.pdf
- Commission on Higher Education, Citizen's Charter (Legal Education Board carve-out) — https://caraga.ched.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Updated-CHED-Citizens-Charter.pdf
