TL;DR: BS Information Systems is a four-year degree governed by CHED Memorandum Order No. 25, series of 2015, the same order that covers BSCS and BSIT. The minimum is 146 units, including 48 units of professional courses, 12 units of professional electives, a 486-hour internship and a capstone project rather than a thesis. There is no board exam. Information Systems is not among PRC's 46 Professional Regulatory Boards. What distinguishes BSIS from its two siblings is the deliberate business layer: financial management, business process management and enterprise performance sit inside the required curriculum, not beside it.
What BS Information Systems Actually Is
CHED's own definition is the cleanest starting point. Under CMO No. 25, s. 2015, "The BS Information Systems Program includes the study of application and effect of information technology to organizations." Graduates should be able to implement an information system while accounting for the technological and organisational factors around it.
The order goes further and states the intent bluntly: IS professionals "require a sound understanding of organizational principles and practices so that they can serve as an effective bridge between the technical and management/users communities within an organization."
That sentence is the whole degree. BSIS is not the computing course for people who find programming hard; it is the computing course for people who will spend their careers translating between what a business needs and what a system can do.
Three degrees share this single memorandum order, which is why people confuse them constantly:
| Programme | CHED's stated focus |
|---|---|
| BSCS | Computing concepts and theories, algorithmic foundations, designing algorithmically complex software |
| BSIS | Application and effect of information technology to organisations |
| BSIT | Planning, installing, customising, operating, administering and maintaining IT infrastructure |
Our BS Computer Science guide and BSIT guide cover the other two in the same detail.
Does BS Information Systems Have a Board Exam?
No. PRC publishes the list of Professional Regulatory Boards it administers, and there are 46. Information Systems is not on it, and neither is Computer Science or Information Technology. There is no licensure examination for BSIS graduates and no licence requirement to work in the field.
The practical consequence is that hiring in this field looks at your capstone project, your internship, and any industry certifications you have picked up, because no exam result stands in for them. Our roundup of courses with board exams shows which Philippine degrees do end in a PRC licence, if that is a factor in your decision.
The BSIS Curriculum
CMO No. 25, s. 2015 prescribes these minimum components.
| Component | BSIS Units |
|---|---|
| General Education | 54 |
| Common Courses (shared with BSCS and BSIT) | 18 |
| Professional Courses | 48 |
| Professional Electives | 12 |
| PE | 8 |
| NSTP | 6 |
| Minimum Total | 146 |
For Centers of Excellence, CHED allows the professional courses, electives and additional mathematics requirement to be compressed to a minimum of 48 units instead of 60, provided the knowledge-area learning outcomes are still met, giving a reduced minimum of 134 units.
The six common computing courses
Every BSCS, BSIS and BSIT student in the country takes these:
- Introduction to Computing
- Computer Programming 1 (Fundamentals of Programming)
- Computer Programming 2 (Intermediate Programming)
- Data Structures and Algorithms
- Information Management
- Applications Development and Emerging Technologies
So yes, you will program. BSIS is not a programming-free degree.
The BSIS professional core
CHED groups the information systems functional areas as:
- Fundamentals of Information Systems
- Professional Issues in Information Systems
- IT Infrastructure and Network Technologies
- Systems Analysis, Design and Development
- Enterprise Architectures
- IS Project Management
- IS Strategy, Management and Acquisition
The business enterprise domain courses
This is the block that makes BSIS different, and the CMO requires it:
- Organization and Management Concepts
- Financial Management
- Business Process Design and Management
- Evaluation of Business Performance
- Quantitative Methods
Professional electives
CHED's recommended elective list for BSIS is unusually revealing about where the degree points: enterprise systems, human computer interaction, IT audit and controls, IS innovations and new technologies, IT security and management, IT service management, a second IS project management course, data mining, business intelligence, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management and customer relationship management.
If data work interests you, note that data mining and business intelligence sit right there in the elective list. Our BS Data Science guide covers the dedicated route.
What CHED Requires a BSIS Graduate To Be Able To Do
The memorandum order expresses its minimum standards as graduate outcomes, and the BSIS-specific set is worth reading before you commit, because it describes the job more honestly than any course list:
- Knowledge for solving computing problems — apply knowledge of business processes, computing, mathematics and social sciences appropriate to information systems.
- Problem analysis — analyse a problem and define the computing requirements with respect to organisational factors, and identify strategies for a solution; evaluate information systems in terms of general quality attributes and the trade-offs available within given requirements.
- Design and development of solutions — design, implement and evaluate information systems, processes, components or programmes, and source cost-benefit efficient alternatives to meet needs, goals and constraints; use an understanding of enterprises in modelling and designing information systems.
- Modern tool usage — deploy the skills, tools and techniques necessary for information systems practice.
- Individual and team work, communication, professionalism and life-long learning — including technical writing, presentation, negotiation and numeracy.
Notice how often "organisational factors", "enterprises" and "cost-benefit" appear. Trade-off analysis under business constraints is the skill this degree is built around.
CHED also names the allied fields for BSIS, which matters for faculty qualifications and for graduate study: applied mathematics, industrial engineering, information management, library and information science, statistics and informatics, alongside basic sciences, mathematics and engineering generally.
Internship and Capstone: The Two Terminal Requirements
Internship: 486 hours minimum. CMO No. 25 sets the same figure for BSIS and BSIT, against 162 hours for BSCS. Students are eligible to enrol in the internship only after completing 70% of the total units in the curriculum, and CHED prefers the placement be full-time. The school and the host company are expected to set learning expectations through a memorandum of agreement or understanding.
That 486-hour figure is worth pausing on. It is roughly three months of full-time work, and in practice it is the single most useful line on a fresh BSIS graduate's CV. Choose the placement seriously.
Capstone project, not a thesis. CHED requires a thesis only of BSCS students. BSIS and BSIT students complete a capstone project, which the order describes as an undertaking appropriate to the programme rather than a research study; it explicitly notes capstone projects need not require surveys and statistical treatment. A BSIS capstone focuses on an information systems solution for an organisation. In the sample curriculum it runs across two 3-unit courses, Capstone Project 1 and Capstone Project 2.
Careers After BSIS
CHED names the job roles it designed the programme around.
| Primary job roles | Secondary job roles |
|---|---|
| Organizational Process Analyst | Applications Developer |
| Data Analyst | End User Trainer |
| Solutions Specialist | Documentation Specialist |
| Systems Analyst | Quality Assurance Specialist |
| IS Project Management Personnel |
In practice, BSIS graduates land in business analysis, ERP and enterprise systems work, IT service and project management, data and reporting roles, and increasingly in the audit and governance side of technology. Business process outsourcing and shared-services employers hire heavily from this profile because the degree explicitly trains the translation layer between operations and systems.
We are not going to attach a peso figure to any of those roles here. Salary bands for analyst and developer work vary enormously by employer, city and whether the role is domestic or serving an offshore client, and there is no occupation-level Philippine wage series specific to BSIS graduates that we would stand behind. Our in-demand courses guide discusses the demand picture more broadly.
Where to Study BSIS
BSIS is widely offered, which makes the selection criteria matter more than the list. Things worth checking with the department itself:
- Does the school hold current CHED authority for BSIS specifically, not just BSIT? The two are separate programme authorities.
- Where do interns actually go? Ask for the list of host companies from the last two years. The 486-hour requirement is only as good as the placement.
- Are the business domain courses taught by the business faculty or improvised? Financial management and business process management are not filler in this curriculum.
- Is the school a Center of Excellence or Development in IT education? That status changes the unit structure CHED permits and usually signals faculty depth.
Our roundup of the best IT schools in the Philippines is a starting shortlist, and students coming from the ICT strand will find the common computing courses familiar territory.
Ready to compare schools? Browse schools on SchoolFinderPH to see programmes, locations and tuition.
Sources
- Commission on Higher Education — CMO No. 25, series of 2015, Revised Policies, Standards and Guidelines for BSCS, BSIS and BSIT Programs
- Professional Regulation Commission — Professional Regulatory Boards
- SchoolFinderPH — BS Computer Science Guide
- SchoolFinderPH — BSIT Explained
- SchoolFinderPH — Best IT Schools in the Philippines
