Education in the Philippines for the Young(er) Expat (and the dumb crap people will tell you)

My wife is a Philippine American, and we moved here to attend school. It just makes sense for our situation. In the U.S. we would have to do the whole full time student with a full time job thing…AGAIN. Here on the other hand, we can comfortably live off of our savings and focus on school. My advice to anyone kicking around the same idea is to have an end plan, ignore what other people tell you and do your own research.

For instance, if you plan to attend medical school here, people will come out of the woodwork to dump all over your plan. And this is exactly what they will tell you, “If you get a medical degree in the Philippines, you will only qualify to be a nurse in the U.S.”. They will then support this “fact” with an example of a guy they know, that knows a guy who works in a hospital with a nurse, who has a Philippines medical degree.

Just ignore these people because they are simple minded crabs that make assumptions based on surface information. In fact, I’d try to keep your plans as vague as possible when talking to most folks. What they don’t know about said guy is that his career change might have been based solely on immigration issues. Maybe he couldn’t get a visa straight up, but he could secure a contract to work as a nurse and he swallowed his pride and went for it. Or maybe he’s at a point in his life where he doesn’t want to work for slave wages to satisfy a 2^nd residency requirement. Who knows?

I don’t recommend it, but if you come here to get a standard undergraduate degree that does not require licensing to work, you could probably just wing it. If you pursue a degree that will require licensing, then do your research and have a plan. The plan will be different for everyone based on their citizenship, where they plan to work, family, etc.

I’ll use my wife as an example because her citizenship makes her a more interesting case. I’m going by memory here so again, do your own research. She is in Law School and she plans to practice law in Hawaii when we return. There are three routes to qualify for the BAR exam there if I remember right:

1) Graduate from a U.S. accredited law school
2) Hold a BAR license from another state
3) Have a foreign degree (and) 5 years of practice in the foreign country.

So in this case she has two options. She can move to a state with a more favorable examination requirement and test there prior to testing to Hawaii (or) she can practice here for 5 years first. If I was in law school, option 2 would not be an option, because Philippines citizenship is a BAR requirement here.

Now I will say that in my experience the education facilities are quite different than the west. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself sitting on a plastic chair in an open air classroom, and eating adobo every day in the lunch room. My wife and I will both have some mini hurdles to navigate, but on the flip side, our tuition and living expenses are dirt cheap compared to Hawaii. Personally, I’m more than happy to deal with a few work arounds, if that means avoiding tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. Plus…really…the Philippines is kind of a fun place to kick around.

"Get your learn on!"