TL;DR — Seven Far Eastern University degrees end in a Professional Regulation Commission licensure exam and four more end in the Licensure Examination for Teachers. Everything else at FEU Manila lands you in a job market where your transcript, not a licence, does the arguing. That distinction matters more than the specialisation names, and it is the thing most course lists leave out.
We already published the full FEU course catalogue with every specialisation under every degree. This post asks a different question about the same list: what does each programme actually get you at the end, and what does FEU require before you can start it?
The campus facts, contacts and levels are on the Far Eastern University profile, and other options in the same city sit on the Manila schools page.
The licence question comes first
In the Philippines, a degree either ends in a Professional Regulation Commission board exam or it does not, and that single fact shapes your first five years of work more than the school's name does. A licensed course gives you a protected title, a regulated scope of practice and a hiring gate that filters out everyone without the licence. An unlicensed course gives you none of that, which is not a defect but does mean your portfolio, internships and first employer carry the whole weight.
Here is how FEU's undergraduate list splits.
| Programme | Ends in a licensure exam? |
|---|---|
| BS Accountancy | Yes — CPA licensure exam |
| BS Architecture | Yes — architect licensure exam |
| BS Nursing | Yes — nurse licensure exam |
| BS Medical Technology | Yes — medical technologist licensure exam |
| BS Pharmacy | Yes — pharmacist licensure exam |
| BS Nutrition and Dietetics | Yes — nutritionist-dietitian licensure exam |
| BS Chemistry | Yes — chemist licensure exam |
| BEEd, BSEd, Special Needs Education, Physical Education | Yes — Licensure Examination for Teachers |
| BS Psychology | Psychometrician exam, without a master's |
| Everything else on the list | No PRC licence |
Two clarifications, because both trip people up.
BS Internal Auditing is not a licensed course. FEU runs it as a standalone degree, which is unusual — most schools bury internal audit as a track inside accountancy. It is a real degree with real employers, but the credentials internal auditors carry are private certifications earned after graduation, not a PRC licence. If the CPA licence is the actual goal, take BS Accountancy and be clear-eyed that it is the harder route with the harder exam.
BS Psychology stops one rung below psychologist. The bachelor's qualifies you for the psychometrician licensure exam. Full psychologist registration requires graduate study.
If you want the wider picture on which board exams are hard to pass and where, our board exam passing rates by course breaks it down nationally.
Institute by institute: what the degree is for
Institute of Accounts, Business, and Finance — Accountancy, Business Administration with financial, marketing and entrepreneurial management specialisations, Business Economics, Internal Auditing, and Human Resource and Organizational Development. One licensed exit (Accountancy), four unlicensed ones. Business Economics is the outlier here: it is closer to an analytical social science than to a management degree, and it feeds research, policy and financial analysis roles rather than a corporate management track.
Institute of Architecture and Fine Arts — BS Architecture with three specialisations, plus Fine Arts in Studio Arts and in Visual Communication. Architecture is five years and ends in a licensure exam; the specialisation you pick does not change which exam you sit. Fine Arts is portfolio work from the first year, and your body of work is the credential.
Institute of Arts and Sciences — the widest range and the most specialisation-heavy. Applied Mathematics splits into data science, information technology and mathematical finance, which is a genuinely useful hedge: the maths core stays constant while the applied half tracks the job market. Biology splits into medical biology, microbiology and systematic biology, and the medical biology track is the standard pre-medicine route. Chemistry is the one licensed programme in this institute. Communication, Language and Literature Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, International Studies and Political Science are all unlicensed, and all are portfolio-and-internship degrees in practice.
Institute of Education — Elementary Education, Secondary Education in English, Mathematics or Science, Special Needs Education, Exercise and Sports Sciences, and Physical Education. Every teaching degree here ends in the LET. Note the limit on the secondary majors: English, Mathematics and Science only. If you want Filipino, Araling Panlipunan or Values Education, FEU Manila does not offer it and you should look elsewhere.
Institute of Health Sciences and Nursing — Nursing, Medical Technology, Nutrition and Dietetics, Pharmacy. All four are licensed. This is the institute where the board exam is not an afterthought but the whole point of enrolling, and where a school's passing rate is the number worth asking about on a campus visit.
Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management — Hospitality Management with four specialisations and Tourism Management with five, including cruise line management, airline operations, and tourism digital content creation and marketing. Neither ends in a licence. What they end in is an internship record and industry contacts, so the specialisation choice here does more work than it does anywhere else in the university.
Institute of Law — Juris Doctor, entered after a bachelor's degree. Outside the undergraduate process entirely; the FEUCAT does not get you in.
What you need before you can start
FEU asks for satisfactory completion of senior high school or an accepted equivalent — the Philippine Educational Placement Test or a DepEd non-formal equivalency test both count — and a pass in the FEU College Admissions Test. The published FEUCAT fee is PHP 500.00, paid after online registration and before booking a test slot, and it can be waived for public-school applicants who placed in the top 10 of their Grade 11 batch on submission of a principal's certification. Results are released two weeks after your test date. Our FEU admission guide goes through the process step by step.
FEU publishes no FEUCAT cut-off score and no per-programme quota. The process tells you when results arrive, not what threshold you needed. Treat any number you read elsewhere as someone's guess.
The second-degree rule that catches people
If you already hold a bachelor's degree and want another one, FEU considers applicants whose official transcript shows a general weighted average of 2.25, 82, 2.0 or C or better. Below that, admission is under probation. The hard limit, stated on FEU's own second-degree page: second-degree applicants are not admitted into BS Nursing or BS Accountancy. If either was your plan for a career change, FEU Manila is closed to you and you need another school.
Non-FEU graduates also submit the original transcript, a diploma photocopy, the original transfer credential or honorable dismissal, a PSA birth certificate, a letter of intent explaining the switch, and two sealed recommendation letters. Deans may credit prior general education subjects through an academic programme credit evaluation, and may also require extra courses.
One practical consequence: if you are switching careers into a health profession, check the exclusion list at every school on your shortlist before you pay a single application fee. Schools that cap or bar second-degree entry into their clinical programmes usually do it because those programmes are already full from the freshman intake, and the rule rarely appears anywhere near the course description.
Two things that are not FEU Manila
FEU Institute of Technology and FEU Dr Nicanor Reyes Medical Foundation are separate institutions in the FEU group, with their own admissions and their own programme lists. Engineering and medicine sit there, not in the Manila undergraduate catalogue, and an FEU Manila application does not reach them.
FEU Makati runs Accountancy, Business Administration and Internal Auditing. FEU Cavite carries extension programmes in Political Science, Communication, Medical Technology, an MS in Psychology, an MBA and the Teacher Certificate Program.
On cost
FEU does not publish a per-programme tuition table. It publishes a payment guide and a set of scholarship pages, so you get an actual figure at assessment rather than before you apply. Named scholarships on its site include the Entrance Scholarship, the Long-Term Educational Assistance Program, the Nicanor Reyes Science Scholarship Program and the Teacher Scholarship Program. Our FEU tuition fee guide works through what students report paying.
Sources
- Far Eastern University, Undergraduate Programs with corresponding specializations — https://www.feu.edu.ph/undergraduate-programs/
- Far Eastern University, Freshmen Application (FEUCAT fee, process, requirements) — https://www.feu.edu.ph/admissions/freshmen-application/
- Far Eastern University, Second Degree Application (GWA rule, Nursing and Accountancy exclusion, documents) — https://www.feu.edu.ph/admissions/second-degree-application/
- Far Eastern University homepage and institute navigation — https://www.feu.edu.ph/