Courses Offered at Universal Colleges of Parañaque

UCP publishes nine colleges and a culinary diploma, and names most of its accredited degree programmes in its own history text. What it does not publish is a proper programme list with majors and curricula, or any tuition figure. Its website carries a 2019 copyright and placeholder filler text on some pages, so treat everything on it as needing a phone confirmation.

Universal Colleges of Parañaque sits on Dr. A. Santos Avenue in Sucat. It opened in 2005 as Universal College of Nursing with a single flagship BS Nursing programme, broadened within a year into hospitality, IT and practical nursing, and renamed itself as the programme list grew. It is recognised by CHED, DepEd and TESDA, and runs junior high, senior high and college. Address, phone and level flags sit on the Universal Colleges of Parañaque profile.

The nine colleges

UCP's own navigation lists nine colleges:

• College of Nursing
• College of Psychology
• College of International Hospitality and Tourism Management
• College of Business and Accountancy
• College of Information Technology
• College of Education
• College of Engineering
• College of Architecture
• College of Culinary Arts

Here is the caveat, and it is a large one. Most of those college pages carry a welcome paragraph, a mission and a vision, and nothing else. There is no degree list, no major, no unit count and no curriculum on any of them. The College of Engineering page has no programme content at all. The College of Psychology page contains a block of senior high school core values that clearly belongs on a different page.

So the college names are reliable, and the degree detail underneath them mostly is not published.

The degrees UCP actually names

Pulling from the pages where degrees are stated by name rather than implied:

• BS Nursing — described as a four-year programme with one summer term, general education plus professional courses with related learning experience as mandated by CHED, and clinical affiliation with DOH-accredited tertiary hospitals. See the BS Nursing guide.
• BS Information Technology — named on the College of Information Technology page.
• BS Business Administration major in Marketing Management — named in the College of Business and Accountancy text.
• Architecture — the College of Architecture describes a programme preparing graduates for the built environment, without naming the degree formally as BS Architecture.
• Professional Culinary Arts and Kitchen Management diploma — described in two places with different durations. The College of Culinary Arts page calls it a series of five-month in-house training activities; a longer article on the same site calls it a seven-month diploma course. Ask which is current.

Its own history page adds the accredited list: Hotel and Restaurant Management, Tourism Management, Education, Business Management, Accountancy, Engineering, Psychology, Architecture, and a Teaching Certificate Programme, with the culinary arts diploma starting in 2013.

That is enough to know roughly what UCP offers. It is not enough to enrol on. Before you commit, ask admissions for the current programme list in writing, with majors and CHED recognition status per programme.

Which programmes end at a licensure exam

UCP's own history claims 100 percent passing rates in engineering, nursing and education licensure exams, a Top 1 national placement in the 2016 CPA board, and a sixth place in the 2017 LET. Those are specific enough to be checkable, but the school does not publish the underlying cohort data. Ask each dean for first-taker passing rates for the last three sittings and compare with board exam passing rates by course.

Senior high school

UCP became a senior high provider in 2016 and offers both tracks.

• Academic: STEM, ABM, HUMSS, GAS
• TVL: Home Economics, Information and Communication Technology

Our academic strands guide covers what each of those feeds into.

Admission: what UCP does publish clearly

This is the strongest part of the site. The requirement lists are complete and specific.

Testing and campus visits. Campus tours run Monday to Saturday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The College Assessment Test and scholarship test run Monday to Saturday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and the site states results are given within the day. That same-day turnaround is genuinely useful if you are deciding late.

Incoming freshmen. For the entrance exam, a photocopy of your current school ID. For enrolment: original Form 138 with LRN, original Form 137 with LRN, original certificate of good moral character, two photocopies of the high school diploma, two photocopies of the birth certificate, two 2x2 photos and four 1x1 photos, all white background.

Transferees. For the entrance exam, the original transcript of records for subject evaluation, plus a PHP 200 entrance exam fee. For enrolment: original good moral certificate, original transcript, original honourable dismissal, two photocopies of the birth certificate, and the same photo set. Ask at the same visit how many of your existing units the evaluation will credit, since that decides how long the degree takes.

Foreign students. The heaviest list: original or certified true copy of the scholastic record authenticated by the Department of Foreign Affairs, an accomplished Personal History Statement with photo and right thumbprint signed by the applicant, an affidavit of adequate support, an authenticated police clearance from the country of origin, a quarantine medical clearance from the National Quarantine Office, a passport photocopy showing the latest arrival stamp and visa, and the PHP 200 exam fee. Enrolment documents match the transferee list.

The published address is 8273 Dr. Arcadio Santos Avenue, San Dionisio, Sucat, Parañaque, with 8820-2222, 0917-568-6971 and 0943-133-9523.

Scholarships

Three categories, none with published amounts.

1. Entrance scholarship, given in the first semester of college to valedictorians, salutatorians, honourable mentions (first, second, third), and top performers on the UCP College Assessment Test.
2. Academic scholarship, called the President's Scholarship.
3. Financial grants, available through UCP Performing Arts, the men's basketball varsity and the women's volleyball varsity.

Ask what percentage of tuition each covers, whether it renews, and what GPA maintains it.

Tuition is not published, and neither is much else

No tuition rate, no per-unit figure, no miscellaneous fee breakdown, no instalment scheme. The only fee published anywhere on the site is the PHP 200 entrance exam fee for transferees and foreign students.

There is a second reason to verify everything by phone. The site's footer carries a 2019 copyright, one page still contains lorem ipsum placeholder text, and the registrar contact block on one page shows a template address in New York. A site that stale is not evidence that the school is inactive, but it does mean nothing on it can be relied on as current.

What to settle before you pay anything

The gap between what UCP claims and what it documents is the whole risk here, and it closes with a handful of specific questions.

Get the programme list in writing. Not "do you offer architecture" but a written list of programmes open for the coming semester, with majors. The nine college names are reliable; the degrees under them are not documented anywhere you can check.

Ask for the government recognition number per programme. Architecture and engineering are the two to press hardest on, because they are the programmes UCP names least precisely on its own site and both lead to a PRC licence. A programme without recognition cannot issue a Special Order, and that surfaces at graduation, not at enrolment. Institutional recognition, programme recognition and voluntary accreditation are three separate things, and only the second one governs whether you can graduate.

Pin down the culinary diploma. The site gives two durations for the same programme, five months in one place and seven in another, and describes it as a diploma in Professional Culinary Arts and Kitchen Management. Ask which is current, whether it carries TESDA registration, and which NC certifications it prepares you for. The TESDA courses guide covers what a registered programme gets you that an unregistered one does not.

Ask each dean for board results. UCP claims 100 percent passing rates in engineering, nursing and education, a Top 1 CPA placement in 2016 and a sixth-place LET finish in 2017. Those are nearly a decade old. Ask for first-taker passing rates for the last three sittings, and the number of first-takers in each.

Get the full first-year cost in writing. Tuition, miscellaneous fees, laboratory fees, uniform, books, and for nursing the cost of clinical duty requirements, which are substantial and routinely left out of a quoted tuition figure.

Who this college suits

UCP makes sense for a Parañaque or south Metro Manila student wanting a licensure-track degree, especially nursing, accountancy or education, at a small private college with same-day entrance test results and a low-friction admission process. The 2016 CPA topnotcher and the LET placement suggest the business and education programmes have had genuine strong years.

It suits you less if you want to compare curricula and costs before visiting, because almost none of that is online. Treat the campus visit as the real research step. For alternatives nearby, see the Parañaque school listings.

Sources

• Universal Colleges of Parañaque, About Us — ucp.edu.ph/index/about-us
• UCP, Academics — ucp.edu.ph/index/academics
• UCP, Admission — ucp.edu.ph/index/admission
• UCP, Incoming Freshmen, Transferees, Foreign Student requirement pages — ucp.edu.ph/index/*
• UCP, Senior High School — ucp.edu.ph/index/shs
• UCP, Scholarships and Grants — ucp.edu.ph/index/grants
• UCP college pages for Nursing, Business and Accountancy, Information Technology, Education, Architecture, Culinary Arts and Hospitality and Tourism

All pages were read directly in September 2026.