The most popular college degree in the Philippines today is nursing. More than 100,000 Filipino nurses have left the country to seek better opportunities. According to the Department of Health, 85 percent of the country’s total number of licensed nurses are to be found in the hospitals of other countries.
One reason why the Philippines is a top supplier of nurses in the world is that it produces skilled nursing graduates who can speak good English.
Manila Times [1] gives a comprehensive background on nursing education in the country.
Ang Blog ni Sayote Queen [2] explains her reasons why she wants to be a nurse. The blogger represents the typical Filipino teenager who aspires for other career but ends up studying nursing in the end.
An OFW Living in Hong Kong [3] believes that money is not the sole reason why Filipino nurses want to work abroad.
The term ‘second-courser’ refers to professionals, including doctors who go back to school again to study nursing. My Life as a Nursing Student [4] chronicles his activities as a second-courser.
Bulatlat [5] features the nursing scandal which recently grabbed national attention: the reported leakage in the nursing board examinations, the resignation en masse of the country’s nursing board and the alleged complicity of the Commission on Higher Education to lower the standards for accrediting new nursing schools.
Government officials clarified [6] that “no glaring leakage” occurred in the nursing examination.