Medical, business courses still most popular in college

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MANILA, Philippines—Almost half of this year’s 553,000 college graduates majored in business- and medicine-related courses, continuing a trend observed by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) over the last 10 years.

Business administration and medical courses remained the most popular courses, accounting for 45 percent of the 2014 graduates.

According to data from CHEd, as many as 142,000, or 25 percent, of all graduates took up business administration and related courses.

Medical related courses are the next most popular category, with about 110,000, or 20 percent, of the graduates from this category.

The other popular courses are information technology (IT), education or teacher training, and engineering.

About 68,000, or 12 percent, of the total graduates took up IT courses.

Another 65,000, or 11 percent, will graduate with education degrees, while about 62,000, or 11 percent, will finish with engineering degrees.

CHEd data over the past decade showed the same popular courses among college graduates.

On the other hand, the least popular courses based on the number of graduates include agriculture-related courses, religion, home economics and general courses.

The relatively low number of agriculture graduates shows the government has not made headway in encouraging students to take up agriculture despite making it as one of the so-called priority courses.—Dona Z. Pazzibugan