TL;DR: BS Chemical Engineering is a four-year engineering degree governed by CHED Memorandum Order No. 91, series of 2017. The memorandum sets a minimum of 170 credit units (120 technical, 50 general education and mandated), a 240-hour Chemical Engineering Immersion worth 2 units, and a two-part capstone design sequence. Yes, there is a PRC board exam - Chemical Engineering is one of the Professional Regulation Commission's 46 Professional Regulatory Boards, licensed under Republic Act No. 9297, the Chemical Engineering Law of 2004. In PSA's 2024 Occupational Wages Survey, chemical engineers in coke and refined petroleum manufacturing recorded an average monthly wage of ₱101,996, the third-highest occupation-industry pairing in the whole survey.
Chemical engineering is one of the few Philippine engineering degrees where the licence question has a clean answer: the degree exists to get you to the Chemical Engineer Licensure Examination, and CHED's own programme policy says so in as many words. This guide works from the memorandum that prescribes the programme, rather than from a school's marketing page, so you can see what every CHED-compliant BSChE curriculum has to contain before individual schools add their own material on top.
Which CHED order prescribes BS Chemical Engineering?
CHED Memorandum Order No. 91, series of 2017 - "Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering (BSChE) Program Effective Academic Year (AY) 2018-2019." It was promulgated by virtue of Commission en banc Resolution No. 788-2017 dated 24 October 2017, and it is an addendum to CMO 37, s. 2012, which established outcomes-based education across engineering programmes.
That framing matters. Under an outcomes-based policy, CHED fixes the required programme outcomes and a minimum curriculum, then explicitly allows schools to design their own route to those outcomes. CMO 91 puts it directly: institutions "are allowed to design curricula suited to their own contexts and missions provided that they can demonstrate that the same leads to the attainment of the required minimum set of outcomes." So the numbers below are floors, not a national fixed curriculum.
What is chemical engineering, per the memorandum?
CMO 91 defines the field as a profession involving the conceptualization, development, design, improvement and application of safe, healthy, ethical and economic ways of utilising materials and energy in unit processes and operations, drawing on mathematics, chemistry, biology, information technology and other natural, applied and social sciences. The memorandum also notes that chemical engineering is one of the broader engineering disciplines, both in the range of problems it covers and the range of knowledge needed to solve them.
For faculty-qualification purposes, CMO 91 lists these programmes as allied to chemical engineering: chemistry, biochemistry, environmental and energy engineering, materials engineering, industrial engineering, biomolecular engineering, petroleum engineering, and food engineering.
How the 170 units break down
CMO 91's own curriculum summary sets the minimum at 170 credit units:
| Classification | Minimum units |
|---|---|
| Mathematics and physical sciences | 20 |
| Basic engineering sciences | 7 |
| Allied courses | 22 |
| Professional courses | 71 |
| Total technical courses | 120 |
| General education courses | 24 |
| General education electives | 9 |
| Mandated courses (Rizal, PE, NSTP) | 17 |
| Total non-technical | 50 |
| Grand total | 170 |
The memorandum adds a ceiling as well as a floor: schools may add courses to meet their own institutional outcomes "as long as the total units for the whole program shall not exceed 192 units, including P.E., and NSTP." A school quoting you 178 or 185 units is not off-standard; it is using the room CMO 91 gives it.
The professional courses CMO 91 names
These are the chemical engineering courses the memorandum lists by name, with the credit units it assigns them. Every CHED-compliant BSChE programme has to cover this ground.
| Professional course | Units |
|---|---|
| Advanced Engineering Mathematics in ChE | 3 |
| ChE Calculations | 3 |
| ChE Thermodynamics | 3 |
| Solution Thermodynamics | 3 |
| Momentum Transfer | 3 |
| Heat and Mass Transfer | 4 |
| Particle Technology | 3 |
| Separation Processes | 3 |
| Chemical Reaction Engineering | 4 |
| Biochemical Engineering | 3 |
| Process Dynamics and Control | 3 |
| Chemical Process Industries | 3 |
| Industrial Waste Management and Control | 3 |
| Chemical Engineering Design 1 | 2 |
| Chemical Engineering Design 2 | 3 |
| Chemical Engineering Laws and Ethics | 1 |
| Process Safety | 1 |
| Chemical Engineering Immersion (240 hours) | 2 |
| Track Specialization 1, 2 and 3 | 3 each |
Alongside those sit the laboratory courses (Chemical Process Lab, Chemical Engineering Lab 1 and 2), Methods of Research, Computer Applications in ChE, and Field Trips and Seminar. The allied load is where the chemistry stacks up: analytical chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry for engineers, fundamentals of materials science and engineering, environmental science and engineering, engineering mechanics, and basic electrical and electronics engineering.
The immersion and the capstone
CMO 91 states plainly that "a minimum of 240 hours of immersion in chemical engineering activities outside the institution and a capstone project in chemical engineering design are the final requirements of the curriculum." In the course table that immersion appears as Chemical Engineering Immersion, 240 laboratory hours for 2 credit units, and the capstone appears as the Design 1 and Design 2 pair.
Two hundred forty hours is the national minimum. Schools routinely run longer placements, and the arrangement of those hours - one block, a summer term, a split across two semesters - is a school decision. Ask about it before you enrol if you need to plan around work or a provincial move.
The track specializations
Three specialization courses of 3 units each are required. CMO 91 suggests these tracks:
- Food and drug manufacturing
- Packaging technologies
- Environmental management
- Petrochemical engineering
- Energy engineering
- Biotechnology
- Paints and coating technology
- Materials science and engineering
- Technopreneurship
- Emerging technologies
The last one is open-ended: CMO 91 says course specifications for emerging-technology electives are developed by the school in line with its own needs but must still be submitted to CHED. Because a school can only offer tracks it has faculty and laboratories for, the available tracks are a genuine point of difference between campuses. If you already know you want petrochemicals or food processing, ask which tracks are actually running, not which ones appear in the printed curriculum.
Is there a PRC board exam for chemical engineering?
Yes. Chemical Engineering is one of the 46 Professional Regulatory Boards listed by the Professional Regulation Commission, and the profession is regulated under Republic Act No. 9297, the Chemical Engineering Law of 2004. CMO 91 refers to that law directly when it defines the scope of practice, and it treats teaching or reviewing a subject that appears in the chemical engineering licensure examination as itself constituting practice of the profession.
That is a sharper position than several neighbouring degrees occupy. Computer engineering, for instance, has no PRC board at all - we cover that in our BS Computer Engineering guide - and industrial engineering is in the same unlicensed position. Chemical engineering is not. If you want the licensed engineer title, this degree is a direct route to it.
For the exam itself - subjects and weights, eligibility, filing, and recent passing rates - see our chemical engineering board exam guide. We do not restate exam schedules here because PRC sets them cycle by cycle; the current calendar always lives on prc.gov.ph.
What chemical engineering graduates do
RA 9297's scope of practice, as summarised in CMO 91, covers professional services to industrial plants: consultation requiring chemical engineering knowledge, investigation, estimation and valuation, planning, feasibility studies, design, preparation of specifications, supervision of installation and operation including quality management, and research.
In practice, BSChE graduates cluster in process industries - oil refining and petrochemicals, food and beverage manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, cement, pulp and paper, water treatment, and power generation - plus process safety, quality assurance, environmental compliance, and technical sales roles that sit alongside them. The suggested track list in CMO 91 is a fair map of where the demand has been.
What the wage data shows
The Philippine Statistics Authority's 2024 Occupational Wages Survey covers formal establishments with 10 or more employees and reports by occupation within industry, not by degree. In that survey:
| Occupation and industry (PSA, 2024) | Average monthly wage |
|---|---|
| Chemical engineers in manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products | ₱101,996 |
| Aircraft pilots and related associate professionals, air transport | ₱137,999 |
| Air traffic safety electronics technicians, air transport | ₱131,536 |
| National average, all occupations | ₱21,544 |
Chemical engineers in refining came in third across the whole survey. Read that carefully: it is one occupation in one high-paying industry, measured across working professionals rather than new graduates. A chemical engineer in food manufacturing or water treatment is not in that line item. Still, it is the strongest single data point PSA publishes for the profession, and it is a long way above the ₱21,544 national average across all occupations.
Disclaimer: PSA figures are survey averages for specific occupation-industry pairings, not guaranteed pay for any individual graduate.
What BS Chemical Engineering costs
We are not going to invent a number. There is no national tuition rate for the programme. State universities and colleges charge no tuition for qualified students under the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act; private schools set their own rates and publish them each academic year, usually with laboratory and equipment fees that matter more here than in a lecture-only degree, given the lab courses CMO 91 requires. Get the current schedule of fees from the school's admissions or finance office and ask specifically what the laboratory and immersion-related costs are.
If cost is the deciding factor, our roundups of the lowest-tuition courses in the Philippines and the best engineering schools in the Philippines are useful starting points.
Before you enrol, ask these
- What is the school's actual unit total? CMO 91's floor is 170 and its ceiling is 192. Where a school sits inside that band changes your semester load and possibly your time to graduate.
- Which track specializations are actually offered this year? Printed curricula list more tracks than most schools run.
- How is the 240-hour immersion scheduled, and does the school place students or do you find your own host? This varies a lot and affects cost.
- What are the laboratory facilities like? CMO 91 sets physical resource requirements precisely because the programme is lab-heavy. Ask to see them.
- Is the programme accredited beyond the CHED minimum? Programme accreditation and Washington Accord-aligned outcomes are worth asking about, since CMO 91 references Washington Accord competency standards in its annexes.
If you are still at senior high school stage, the subject preparation matters: see our note on the right strand for engineering, and our list of courses with board exams if the licence itself is what you are optimising for.
Ready to find the right school? Browse schools or compare programmes across hundreds of Philippine schools on SchoolFinderPH.
Sources
- CHED Memorandum Order No. 91, s. 2017 - Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the BS Chemical Engineering Program (CHED, PDF)
- CHED - 2017 CHED Memorandum Orders index
- Professional Regulation Commission - List of Professional Regulatory Boards
- Republic Act No. 9297, Chemical Engineering Law of 2004 - full text (LawPhil)
- BusinessMirror - PSA data: industry wages show 3-fold gap in 2024 (2024 Occupational Wages Survey figures)
- PhilSTAR Life - Highest-paying jobs in the PH and their average monthly wages, per PSA
- Philippine Statistics Authority - Occupational Wages Survey
